HHD drives Mounted sideway vertical or flat

Comixbooks

Comixbooks

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I'm looking at the Corsiar 740 air case the only thing I don't like about the case is you have to mount the HDD drives sideways on the side vs: flat. Does this affect anything performance or lifespan?

 
At work I have 50+ drives mounted sideways for years. All of my hot sway bays are sideways. If any thing this is better for long term reliability.
 
ok thanks I think i might take the risk on the case I wish I didn't buy a extra Coolermaster Enforcer a few months back and extra power switches. Cases just take up so much room I have like 4 different ones now.
 
I have my hard drives mounted like this... [H] ... with the connectors pointing down in my SFF case. Might have been an issue with 8" platters that were not balanced well back in the day but mechadrives are so small and well-balanced these days that their orientation shouldn't hinder performance or decrease life.
 
The only thing you need to do is NOT try to use them in a new orientation for a long period. If you plan on a re-layout that changes orientation then reformat the drives after moving them for *long term* stability. The likelihood of issues is fairly low, but it's a possibility.

Other than that use them in any orientation at all, even upside down.
 
Why would you reformat them if you change orientation?
 
I think I'll keep my case last thing I need to do is download 1TB of steam games just because I wanted a case change. I just like how Buxom the 740 Carbide air looks.
 
ChoGGi said:
Why would you reformat them if you change orientation?
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While the servo mechanisms are impressive, gravity still does its job and bits keep getting smaller. Writing a bunch of data and then changing the drive orientation increases the chance of read errors.
 
A great many business workstation boxes mount the drives sideways or vertical. Would not be so if it were detrimental.

As for me, most of my custom builds I fab a HDD rack that mounts the drives standing with cables up - directly behind the front intake fans. Drives in the system in my signature have worked flawlessly this way for 9 years and going ...
 
Comixbooks said:
I think I'll keep my case last thing I need to do is download 1TB of steam games just because I wanted a case change. I just like how Buxom the 740 Carbide air looks.
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Feel free to get that case, and don't worry about the HDD orientation.
 
I have never seen that. Although for the most part I don't make this change after data is added. With the 10 x 6TB HGSTs I installed this week were horizontal to build the array and to add 19TB of data but then when I finally installed them I put them in the sideways hot swap bays. I have since done 2 scrubs on the array and and 2 MD5 hash comparisons and not a single bit was mismatched.
 
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alaricljs said:
Real life experience with exactly that situation on a number of drives.
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I havent seen this either but I wont deny your experience.
Perhaps due to lower quality hardware?

My 1yr old HGST 4TB internal drive was formatted flat inside the case, was run on its edge since I mounted my PC case inside a table and has been at 45 degrees outside the case for a month or so.
Not a peep of a problem.
My 4yr old Hitachi 4TB external backup drive gets used in all sorts of positions, again no problems.
 
I've had many, many drives mounted flat, sideways, facing up, facing down, even upside down for extended periods over the past 20 years and neveranottaproblem0 :D
 
Ok thanks for the replies going to look into the case once I save up for it. I need to get rid of some stuff just to make Room for it.
 
i actually agree on not changing the orientation after long term use. more than once we have had rack mount installs that years later became up-right servers. a few months after the transition the drives would heat up and slowly die off one by one.

my theory is the bearings in the drives, this happens in automotive use with keeper bushings and some other bearings. after they are worn in in one direction they end up with a sharp edge on the outer ring, if its flipped and rides that edge for a long enough time they will eventually fail.

to further this one of the servers that had been converted to up right and started having drive issues. we did not even replace the drives, but laid the server on its side and ran it for another year with no more drive issues.
 
Well, I wanna get in on the fun.

SJZVNC3.jpg
 
Zedicus said:
i actually agree on not changing the orientation after long term use. more than once we have had rack mount installs that years later became up-right servers. a few months after the transition the drives would heat up and slowly die off one by one.

my theory is the bearings in the drives, this happens in automotive use with keeper bushings and some other bearings. after they are worn in in one direction they end up with a sharp edge on the outer ring, if its flipped and rides that edge for a long enough time they will eventually fail.

to further this one of the servers that had been converted to up right and started having drive issues. we did not even replace the drives, but laid the server on its side and ran it for another year with no more drive issues.
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Makes sense.
New drives or drives that regularly change orientation are ok to continue doing so.
Long term use at one angle shouldnt be changed.

Question is how many hours use?
I dont use drive power saving so this could be a problem for me at some point.
However... I have drives that were used flat in an upright tower case for 3+ years 24/7.
The case has been on its side for over 2 months, everything is fine so far.

Perhaps there are some drives that have extra toughened bearings and sleeves.
Worth being cautious of it regardless.
 
I recently put together a new server and needed to mount my HD's upside down so that the power cable from the PSU didn't need to loop down and then back up again. Have had -0- problems.
 
Old hard drives positioned their heads by using stepper motors that were aligned to an outer track or even an optical mark like floppy drives, and their track alignment could be affected by changes in temperature (why freezing them sometimes allowed for data recovery) or orientation. But all hard drives made since about the early-mid 1990s have servo marks that automatically compensate for those factors, making orientation irrelevant to track alignment. However some drive companies required drives to be mounted within 5 or 10 degrees of perfectly vertical or horizontal, and at least one drive maker, including Seagate, prohibited mounting the drive with the front downward vertical because of the balance of the head arm assembly, which included a counterweight.

As for bearing wear, ball bearings are fine either way, but I can't find information about the sleeve bearings that modern hard drives use.

Back when Maxtor was an independent company and 30GB was considered not puny, I found that mounting a 7200 RPM 3.5" drive vertically could make its aluminum casting run 1-2 Celcius cooler than a horizontal drive's, and if the chips faced outward (most don't now), the hottest ones, like the high power ones that move the motor and heads, could run 5-10C cooler.
 
Comixbooks said:
I'm looking at the Corsiar 740 air case the only thing I don't like about the case is you have to mount the HDD drives sideways on the side vs: flat. Does this affect anything performance or lifespan?
Click to expand...
I've had my HDD's mounted on their side for about 1.5 years now and I haven't noticed any issues.
 
Dell BTX MT's had upside down hard drive bays. The caddy won't fit right side up. Makes the cabling really nice though which I'm sure is why they chose that solution
 
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