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Mounting an HDD Upside Down...

C

Caveman

Platinum Member
Due to several fit issues (won't bore with the details), my HDDS have to be mounted in a tower case upsidedown.

All appears to work just fine, but I was wondering the effects (long term) of operating a drive upsidedown...

Are HDDs meant to operate in ANY orientation nominally, with no ill effect? Or... Does the construction of the drive mandate longest life in only one orientation 9assumably "right-side up")?

Will contact Seagate for their take on this... But wondering if anyone here can lend a hand...
 
Heh never thought about it but I assume not since my p180 hdd cage has the hdds screwed in vertically so I would assume upside down doesn't matter?
 
It will work (Ive had to do it too...), your concern becomes the dust that settles on the circuitry which could cause a short.
 
back before FDB bearings were used, i had an old HDD and it started making strange noises, it sounded like it was grinding, I backed up the drive and then mounted it upside down, (I dont remember why) to my surprise after about 2 weeks the sound completely went away, and it still works. ( this was about 7 years ago.) turns out that old drives used some sort of liquid lubricant in them which could actually settle down and become ineffective.

not really an answer to you question, but i thought it was interesting.
 
Originally posted by: McManCSU
It will work (Ive had to do it too...), your concern becomes the dust that settles on the circuitry which could cause a short.
Click to expand...
Common household dust is not electrically conductive. If it were conductive, circuit boards in most all consumer electronics (and not just PC's) would be affected. TV's, monitors, receivers etc have numerous upside down circuit boards as do PC's - PCI cards are mounted circuit side up. Finally, dust accumulates everywhere inside consumer electronic devices including on the bottom of circuit boards!
 
Any orientation along an axis (horizontal or vertical) should be fine for a harddrive I believe, though don't quote me on anything beside upside down and right side up. Tilted would be bad though.
 
Originally posted by: nineball9
Originally posted by: McManCSU
It will work (Ive had to do it too...), your concern becomes the dust that settles on the circuitry which could cause a short.
Click to expand...
Common household dust is not electrically conductive. If it were conductive, circuit boards in most all consumer electronics (and not just PC's) would be affected. TV's, monitors, receivers etc have numerous upside down circuit boards as do PC's - PCI cards are mounted circuit side up. Finally, dust accumulates everywhere inside consumer electronic devices including on the bottom of circuit boards!
Click to expand...

Although you are absolutely correct that dust is non-conductive, it does absorbs moisture and accumulates conductive "wetness" which causes solid state devices to fail prematurely, especially for those non-coated sealed circuit cards. This is more pronounced in high voltage cards just like the one in your PSU. How soon a card will fail due to moisture depends on humidity and changes in temperature and of course the amount of dust collected in the card.
 
I worked on an older Gateway once that had the hdd mounted upside down at the very top of the case because there was no where else to put it, because the case was so small. It is still working fine after several years.
 
If the OP had bothered to check his HDD mfr's web site for their installation guide for his series of drives, he would have found that any fairly recent series of HDDs can be mounted in any orientation except more than 5 degrees off of horizontal or vertical (for longest potential life). But I won't do it (mount a HDD PCB up) and if I find one that way I FIX IT! It's just WRONG...

Avoid being "Tom Sawyered" - tell 'em to go look it up!!!

.bh.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
HDDs can be mounted in any orientation except more than 5 degrees off of horizontal or vertical (for longest potential life).
Click to expand...

So, you can have them at 0º or 90º, but not 5º or 85º? Strange.

Way back in 1995, worked on a Compaq Deskpro 486 machine that had the drive mounted upside down. That's the way those cases were made.
 
never had problems with "abnormally mounted HDD" heck i got a 80GB that was hanging outside my case for two years and it still works fine i still put all my mp3 and play it from there.. no probs... so for me the answer is no although it gets dusty pretty fast
 
Zap,

Mounting at an angle off horizontal or vertical puts an angular stress on the motor bearings due to the forces of gravity.

Way back in 1995, worked on a Compaq Deskpro 486 machine that had the drive mounted upside down. That's the way those cases were made. - Zap
Click to expand...

Yup. If I remember correctly, it was a Quantum Bigfoot (one of the slowest and most failure-prone HDD series ever) drive in some of them. They were too cheap to add a 50 cent bracket so it would be "right side" up. I wasn't too cheap. Of course I rolled the cost into my bill...

And it would be 5.000...1 or 95.000...1 degrees - as any angle beyond that (until 270 deg.) puts the PCB up. And I don't go there... 😉

.bh.
 
I remember way back in the days when I started building PCs the little booklet that came with the HDD stating that it doesn't matter how you mount them. Granted, that was when 120 MB drives @ PIO 0 were the thing to have 😉 Anyway, I have a Quantum Fireball (12 Gig) hanging in my case about 45 degrees angled in all directions. I guess it's now about 10 years old, still working great.
 
I'm trying to figure out why you would need to do such a thing. If space is an issue, is turning the drive upside down going to magically make it smaller?
 
I can't envision the old Compaq w/ the Bigfoot any more. But I think it was that there was stuff that got in the way of using the side mounting holes so they had to use the bottom mounting holes and the only way to make those easily useable was to mount the drive toes up... Or it could be just because that avoided a twist in the HDD cable which cuts an inch or two out of the length of the HDD cable that they had to have made... Hard to believe they would be that pinch-penny eh.

I think that was about the time that the eMachines from Korea started to kill 'em price wise - but those were craptacular in their own ways...

.bh.
 
Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
I'm trying to figure out why you would need to do such a thing. If space is an issue, is turning the drive upside down going to magically make it smaller?
Click to expand...

It gives the .5" or so that I need since the connectors are biased to the bottom of the ~1" thick drive... I'm already using a 24" cable and didn't want to go to 3ft since the recommended longest length per the ATA standard is 18"...

The issue was caused by a combination of case/DVD locations/HDD locations/IDE locations on the mobo... All just right to be wrong... Flipping the drive over seemed the best "fix"...

 
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