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Harddrive Mounting

Gk22CoE

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 21, 2003
Messages
263
Is it damageing to mount a harddrive upside down? or vertical?

It's a maxtor.... if that matters...
 
I dont think it matters. I have had a hd mounted vertically for about 2 years...NP...
 
Come to think of it i've had a harddrive mounted vertical for a long time too.

upside down is my real consern
 
My case has its hdd drive bay underneath the floppy drive mount like most cases do. Since I wanted to keep my drives cool, I made some brackets with holes to "hang" my hdds into the flow of my front case fan. I guess they were slightly off balance, because about 1.5 to 2 years later, my drives started to develop this squeaking sound (sounds like a damn turkey caller- the one with the metal pan) Anyways, this got annoying so I put the drives back where they supposed to be and voila! No more squeak sounds!

Cliff notes:
I think mounting drives in weird positions is ok, just as long as it's level. (Ok, well except for the upside down position)
 
Don't mount them at any angle, they can be a few degrees tilted but beyond that it could cause problems, Vertical or horizontal is best.
 
Short version: Modern HDDs are equiped with various technologies to make it so that it doesn't matter what position you mount them in. Old drives (read, very old) used stepper motors to move the heads along the platter, so the position you formatted them in was the position that you had to use it in.

This is no longer the case.
 
Manufacturers still recommend you mount them horizontal or vertical but not at an angle. Upside down still counts as horizontal.
 
No. It doesn't matter how the drive is mounted.

I've had a RAID array mounted upside down in my case working just fine. The drives and cables just fit better that way.
 
Did you even read what I wrote?

I said they recommend against anything but horizontal or vertical, upside down still counts as horizontal(aka it's ok.)

The only time you can have an issue is at an angle beyond horizontal or vertical +- a few degrees.


Just called western digital tech support to verify if drives can be mounted at an angle.

"We recommend you install the drive horizonatally or vertically."
I then asked the reason why.
"The mechanics of the drive are not designed to work at and angle and can become unaligned."

Mainly I'm directing this at the person who said they can be mounted in any position at any angle. That is bad advice based on WD's Tech Support and I'm very positive that any other manufacturer will tell you something along the same lines that angles are bad, stick to horizontal and vertical.
 
drives spin so fast that the heads cant touch the platters. the platters push so much air over that the heads will stay off of them.
 
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