• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Tilting Drives... okay?

B

bobsaget

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jan 24, 2004
Messages
4,403
Is it perfectly ok to have a hard drive in your case vertically?

this is probably a stupid question, but I thought I'd check with y'all first :p :D


thanks
 
You can put them in there just about any way you can bolt them in. Go for it.
 
It's possible, but putting it vertical may actually do damage in the long run, the bearings wear out because of acceleration of the platter caused by a damn thing called gravity...
Not to mention the heads wear out because they have to move against gravity whenever they have to move up. So while you can do it, just be warned of the risks... it may shorten drive life.
 
There are a number of cases that mount the drives vertically, such as Lian Li cases. What I've always been told over the years is that it's perfectly fine assuming they are either vertical or flat. No angles, because that will throw off the centripital (sp?) of the platters. Perfectly flat is fine, and perfectly vertical is ok.
 
Back in the day putting them at anything but flat was bad, but now you can put them in any position with no problems. I've mounted modern drives at about a 45 degree tilt many times and have never had issues with it.
 
I don't know if it's my imagination, but i ran my case while it was lying on its side the other day ( making the hdd vertical) and know it seems like the hard drive "grunts" a little when going through data ( ie searching for files, copying files etc). I think it's quieted down now, but for a couple days i could hear it pretty well. Never did that before i ran it vertical. Anyone else ever have this problem?
 
I have never seen ANY impact to non-90 and non-180 drives. I think it is an old wives tale to say otherwise.
 
tdg said:
Back in the day .
Click to expand...

To Wit

Drives that employed stepper motors
Orientation and Mounting at the PC GuideOlder hard disks that used stepper motor actuators were much more sensitive to orientation. It was in fact often recommended that the low-level formatting of the disk always be done after the disk was installed in its operating position, to avoid any shifting of the location of the tracks that might be caused by changing the orientation. Since hard disks today are much more solidly built, and they use voice coil actuators for dynamic head positioning, this really is not an issue. A modern hard disk can be side-mounted in the case without any problems, and can also have its orientation changed after it has been in use for some time.
Click to expand...

Antique technology these days ;)

the end user cant even do a true low level format these days, it has to be done in factory
pretty much any oreintation is OK

but be very careful when installing
Proper Handling Guide @ Seagate

treat it very gently ;)

Good Luck
 
It may just be coincidence, but here at work, we have over a hundred older (4 years old now) Dell Dimension XPS 700's, which used a vertical mounting system for the hard drives. Up until the warranty ran out last summer, we didn't have any problems with them, but since then, we probably replace at least one hard drive a week in these systems. Most of them haven't gotten to the point where they are completely dead yet, just EXTREMELY slow. Throw a new HD in, and they work great. Like I said, it could be just coincidence, but we have replaced probably 50 of them in the last year, and they weren't even all the same brand/model of hard drive. Just to be on the safe side, we've started to mount them flat from now on.
 
I wouldn't expect more than 5 years from a desktop ATA unit, 4 is doing pretty good. It's not the orientation that screws them up, just the age and usage. And be happy they lasted that long, one of the places I've worked in the past had about 400 Dell desktops, most of which had Maxtors, and we went through those things like M&Ms. The only good part was they were under warranty since the machines were brand new.
 
yeah, it's just wierd that those are the only computers that we've had consistent problems with. I don't doubt that the drives are just reaching the end of the line, but on the other hand, we have a whole bunch of Gateway 4200 machines that are a year or more older than the Dell's, and we've only replaced a few of them. Strange.
 
The gateways from that era are built from masonry. Another biz I used to work for still uses some Gateway P75s and P133s from the mid 90s. The bezels just started to discolor 18 months ago, but otherwise they run fine. A lot of the staff still use them at home since we sold them out when they were replaced by the Dells. And that's another part of the mystery, the Dells that this place got were of the same vintage as the other site with all the failures, yet were lower-end models, and even being cheaper, they still had higher quality drives (IBMs vs. a mix of Maxtors & IBMs at the other site). I guess Dell just uses what's on hand that given day/hour.
 
I have had one of my harddrives tilted at a 30 degree angle for a while and never had problems with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top