Hard Drives mounted 90 Degrees?

3

3DChipset

Gawd
Joined
Sep 3, 2007
Messages
670
Are there any long term damage having a hard drive mounted vertically instead of horizontal?
 
Great... Thanks. Was always curious about the mechanics of the drive in vertical mode vs horizontal mode.
 
It doesn't matter what orientation a hard-drive is mounted as long as it doesnt change while the drive is running
 
houkouonchi said:
It doesn't matter what orientation a hard-drive is mounted as long as it doesnt change while the drive is running
Click to expand...

I've always heard that you want to keep it either flat, on its side, or straight up and down. Odd angles are supposed to be bad.
 
Ya gotta wonder though, in any of our uses and probably ANY use, it simply doesn't matter. But given the nature of bearings, gravity on the bearings, heads etc. Flat seems better. I'd like to se a 100-drive test done, both ways, over the period of 10 years or whatever it takes them all to fail and truly see if one is better than the other.
 
Since there is no physical contact between the bearings and the walls of the housing, it is irrelevant. That's why there's "Fluid Dynamic Bearings."
If vertical versus horizontal actually affected life expectancy, large scale arrays would not exclusively mount drives vertically. Yes, exclusively - no major high end array mounts horizontally. They're all vertical, because it improves density. (16 per 3U)
 
Unknown-One said:
I've always heard that you want to keep it either flat, on its side, or straight up and down. Odd angles are supposed to be bad.
Click to expand...

Nope, otherwise laptop drives would be really in for it.. I had some gateways at work that had their drives at about 20 degrees from vertical and the drives outlasted the usefulness of the computers..
 
AreEss said:
Since there is no physical contact between the bearings and the walls of the housing, it is irrelevant. That's why there's "Fluid Dynamic Bearings."
If vertical versus horizontal actually affected life expectancy, large scale arrays would not exclusively mount drives vertically. Yes, exclusively - no major high end array mounts horizontally. They're all vertical, because it improves density. (16 per 3U)
Click to expand...

True indeed. Although things are starting to change with the 2.5" SAS. Lots of DAS vendors are going horizontal (3 high) in a 2U chassis. But again, most, if not all SANs are still on and will probably stay on 3.5" vertical. Like you said, density.
 
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