Running an HD on It's Side

[Slartibartfast]

Hey all, forgive my naievette, but I was wondering if lying a tower on it's side and running it that way would cause any damage to the HD, as it would be running while standing up on one of the long sides. I've seen HD's mounted vertically in OEM machines before, but standing on the short end, not the long. No worries about the optical drives, it's an old Linux box and I never need to put CD's in it.

The drive in question is an old quantum fireball at 5400rpm.

Thanks all!

[unhappy_mage]

Nope. Older drives (like early 1990s) would have problems going from a horizontal to a vertical orientation, but they fixed that now. Only 90 degree orientations are suggested, though - don't mount it at a slant, in other words.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1392.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1392)

[Slartibartfast]

Nope. Older drives (like early 1990s) would have problems going from a horizontal to a vertical orientation, but they fixed that now. Only 90 degree orientations are suggested, though - don't mount it at a slant, in other words.

Ok, thanks for the input. It's definitely not early 90's (the boot partition is larger than the hd was in my 386..) :D

[eastvillager]

doesn't matter anymore. In fact, most of the enterprise-class arrays I work with mount their drives sideways.

In the old days you could run them either way, but you need to make sure you formatted the drive in the same orientation you mounted. I suppose there was quite a bit more slop in the head movement back then.