Hardrive mounted sideways

[BIGHOGJEEPatYAHOO]

i left my puter on its side and put monitor ontop of it so i could save alittle room and after a day my ibm 75gxp harddrive started making some wierd noises do i need to mount it horizontal or does it matter

 

[CHINESE]

the position of the harddrive shouldn't matter. ex: my current system's dual hd are mounted horizontally, but my old F..king compaq's quantum big foot HD was mounted vertically. The important things is that make sure the HD is securely mounted and doesn't vibrate when searching of accessing the date.

 

[johneetrash]

yea my friend's old computer had harddrives mounted vertically, i think the only thing that wouldnt work if mounted vertically would be a cdrom

 

[Tryst]

actually, mounting the cdrom vertically would fine too. There are clips that hold the cd in and it reads with no problems.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Well, not all cdroms have those clips, but assuming yours does, then yes, certainlly you can use your CDROM on its side. Just for kicks why not try mounting your HD the other way again and see if the noise goes away?

 

[bacillus]

<< my ibm 75gxp harddrive started making some wierd noises >>


are you sure it was emenating from the drive itself or was it vibration noises due to it not being secured properly?

 

[Vinny N]

I think this has been discussed in another thread before...

one of the main points was that the parts wear together, so if you're going to mount it vertically, remember to mount it vertically should you move it to another system. Or conversely, if you mounted it in a horizontal direction and used it in that orientation for an extended period of time it's not recommended you mount the same drive in a different position should you mount it elsewhere.

 

[toph99]

my Maxtor in my dell is mounted vertically. works just fine, though it's a pain to get it out

 

[corkyg]

Vinny-N hits the main point . . . it should be consistent. Once you mount a drive horizontally, then it will adapt to that position. Same for vertically. The thing not to do is change them.

 

[jamarno]

The only restrictions I've seen are that the drive must be mounted within 10 deg. of vertical or horizontal, and Seagate used to prohibit mounting with the front pointing straight down, both reasons probably related to head arm counterweight balance.

Vertical mounting is a good idea for cooling purposes if you don't use a fan, especially for some of the chips. I once mentioned measuring a Maxtor chip at 68C when the drive was horizontal, 53C when it was vertical, tests done on the bench, ambient about 25C.

It's a myth that orientation shouldn't be changed later on. That may have applied to old drives with stepper motor head positioners and no track servos (and not that much even with them), but all drives made in the past 10 years or so have servos, which automatically compensate the head positioning for wear and temperature, and Winchester drive ball bearings have always been the preloaded type (oil-pumping sleeve bearings in some Seagates and Quantums may be another matter), meaning no slop and no restrictions on orientation.

 

[esung]

jamarno is right.. there's shouldn't be any problem changing the drive's orientation.

and as for BIGHOGJEEPatYAHOO, it's likely that your 75GXP drive is one of the many that needs to be replaced.. IBM really have a lot of problem with 75GXP, especially the 45G version.. but my 30G also start to fail within 3 months of usage.