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Is it OK to mount Hard Drives *vertically* ?

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Actually, My Dell came with the Maxtor mounted vertically. It has been performing flawlessly to this day, and I see no reason to change it.
 
Yea, the 2.5" drive in my laptop gets banged around all day long, rotating sidewards even, while accessing data and it's been working fine like this for years. Granted, I'm sure the drive would die if you gave it enough g-forces, but these things are built pretty strongly.
 
My old PC has 2 HDDs, 1 which I mounted vertically and it has been runing for 2+ years with no problems... I think it's an IBM or Maxtor.
 
vegetation,

I bang my laptop too every day, and the HD crashed once 🙂
It made a clickity-click sound, and something rolled inside it.

P.S. I think laptop HD's are much more durable because manufacturers know they will be banged.
 
Just think of all the people who've taken desktops and stood them up as "makeshift towers" just to get them out of the way. I've seen machines at work run just fine like this for many months without a hitch (partly because upgrades are few and far between for us!).

My guess is that it's "theoretically" a tiny bit better to mount a HDD horizontally, just because of the nature of the spindle mechanism, but the parts affected by the vertical/horizontal positioning aren't typically the first ones to fail anyway.
 




<< It's called a loose cable. >>



Zach-
No, it wasn't a loose cable; I'm not a &quot;newbie&quot; and that would have been the first thing I'd check.
Believe it or not, that's the way it acted.
 
Yes, you can mount it vertically as others have said, I had a system with one like that and never had a problem. My current hd is hanging vertically by the ribbon cable because i am too lazy to actually mount it up incase I have to swap it for something. As for the question of gravity and the head movement: Take apart a old dead HDD and pull out the head actuator setup and put a battery up to the two power leads. It will snap so fast that you will be glad your fingers weren't in the way! Next, just for fun, remove the magnets in the device and play with those. I wouldn't suggest putting your finger between the two of those things. Their power is decevingly strong despite their small size.

Just a bit for your database....
 
I have two HDs mounted vertically in my Gateway PII-450:

1xQuantum 10.2GB 5400rpm ATA33 IDE (3 years old)
1xMaxtor 27.2GB 7200rpm ATA33 IDE (1.5 years old)

Never had a problem with either. All the drives I've mounted in boxes I've built recently have been horizontal, though.
 
whoeveryouare,

That's a very going point - I forgot that if you stand up a desktop case, the drives will end up being vertical 🙂 I am typing thig message on such a computer.

Gateway even includes little legs/holders that you can put under the desktop case to make it stand up well.
 
C6H6,

I know about those magnets. It's the only magnets that work through your hand 🙂 You can do magic tricks with them. If it sticks to your fridge, it's like having it glued down.
 


<<

<< It's called a loose cable. >>



Zach-
No, it wasn't a loose cable; I'm not a &quot;newbie&quot; and that would have been the first thing I'd check.
Believe it or not, that's the way it acted. >>



I don't believe that it was due to being verticle. If you aren't a newbie, and a very skilled person as you may be implying, you could give me plenty of reasons for this to happen instead of me trying to think of solutions for you.
 
I agree that vertical is okay. I have had a Micron with a PII-300 with the drive standing on end for about 4 years. Most of the drive racks for servers mount them that way too. I don't think that you can mount them in ANY position though. Upside down probably wouldn't work too well.
 
Vertical is fine because:

1. The bearings don't care about orientation because they're preloaded, and they can easily tolerate any slight extra radial load from vertical mounting.

2. The heads, although they float on cushions of air during operation, have fairly stiff springs on their arms that try to press the heads against the platters with a fair amount of pressure. Even when a drive is mounted horizontally, the heads on the bottoms of the platters would need those springs.

3. All modern drives use a servo to position their heads, and this automatically compensates for any shifts between the platters and heads. But even stepper motor, non-servo PC drives rarely had problems related to orientation.

4. The only possible factor restricting orientation is the balance of the head arms, but drives have a counterweight to take care of this, except possibly when the front is facing down (an old Seagate restriction that probably hasn't applied for almost a decade).

5. Vertical mounting can make the chips that drive the motor and move the heads run 10-20C cooler. These chips are responsible for many drive failures.
 
jamarno,

Wow, that was a great explanation.

Just to summarize, you personally would mount your hard drives vertically, right? It's one thing to know the mechanics of the process, and another to actually use it in your own machine..
 
Yes you can have your HD in any position you want and it'll work fine. When I image my HD to a spare, I just leave the spare danglin in the wind while the image is being created. When I do an image off of a 10KAtlas, one time it'll be standing up, the next horizontal, the next diagonal, etc., etc., etc.
 
(Pederv)



<< When I image my HD to a spare, I just leave the spare danglin in the wind while the image is being created. >>



-- Yes, but I was also curious about long-term side effects.. I was afraid that if would heat more, and that you could notice maybe after a few hours of continuous work.. But according to many people here, there are no side effects.
 
My old Tandy 1000 SX (with 8086 processor!) had its 40 MB hard drive mounted vertically. It lasted many years, but the bearing eventually developed a flat and one day it refused to spin up. I had to open the case and move her to get her started so I could download the data. Luckily that was just days before my new IBM laptop arrived.
 


<< I don't believe that it was due to being verticle. If you aren't a newbie, and a very skilled person as you may be implying, you could give me plenty of reasons for this to happen instead of me trying to think of solutions for you. >>



I was merely passing on a experience with a hd that I had that happened to be in a verticle position which was what the post was about. It works fine now so I'm not worried about it. It obvious from official concensus that it wasn't because it was in the verticle position that it acted this way. I don't know why it acted that way, but it did, and I thought it odd. So, at the pointlessness of qualifying the intent of my post and my skill level with computers, or getting offended when I don't need to be,I'll concede and just say, &quot;oh well, must not have had the cable on correctly.&quot; Mystery solved.
 
I have seen many, many rackmount scsi servers with the hot-swap bays lined up vertically across the front, so i think you are fine.

I hate thos HDD magnets, a couple of those little guys pinched the edge of my hand so hard that i got cut!
 
Aint no problem.
We have a bunch of racks with HD's, those things cost mucho money, and the service contracts arent cheap either, so they'd better be reliable 🙂

Harddrives are mounted vertically in every disk rack I've ever seen in fact...
 
I've got a stack of Dell Precision 330's with Atlas10K's in them all mounted vertically. Another stack of Compaq Deskpro's with WD 6.4GB IDE's all mounted vertically. The Dell's are new the Compaq's are about 4 years old. If big named manufacturers do it, why can't we? 😉
The company I work for has equipment on commercial aircraft and they have to put HD's in shock resistant enclosures to keep the failure rate down. So long term exposure to high vibration can reduce the life of your HD.
 


<< Is it OK to mount hard drives vertically? (so you will have the longest side on the bottom >>



I have never seen a Harddrive with a &quot;this way up&quot; sign so mount them any way you want and blame the Harddrive maker if it packs up. I have mounted 2 upside down due to case and cable connection hassels.
 
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