mounting drives vertically

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2004
Posts
11,192
I am pondering about getting the P180 case, but iv noticed the bottom 4 drives mount vertically, leaves me abit concerned putting the drives on there edges, is it ok ? will it effect there life cycle ?
 
drives have been mounted on their sides since the early days of PC's :)

As mentioned it shouldn't cause any problems:)
 
Yup, orientation of modern HDU's is not significant anymore given that manufacturers know that some will go into servers (low end - obviously you won't see many IDE or SATA in mid-high end :p) and not necessarily run horizontal etc.

The only thing is that you cannot move them whilst in operation, but that is just common sense really :).
 
I could be wrong, but I thought they advised against installing HDDs (and/or Optical Drives) in anything other than completely horizontal, or completely vertical. What I mean is, they work fine either lying down or upright, but you can't/shouldn't put them at some weird angle like 45 degrees.

Am I just hallucinating IT advice that doesn't exist?
 
jhmaeng said:
I could be wrong, but I thought they advised against installing HDDs (and/or Optical Drives) in anything other than completely horizontal, or completely vertical. What I mean is, they work fine either lying down or upright, but you can't/shouldn't put them at some weird angle like 45 degrees.

Am I just hallucinating IT advice that doesn't exist?
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Nope, that sounds like something I've heard too.
 
It's cause of gyroscopic effect - hold a fan, or bicycle wheel or something while it's spining and move it around at different angles. There's a force there called the centripetal (not centrifugal) force. If a hard-dsic (or cd-drive, etc) was to be positioned at a funny angle then this force would do funny things to the discs (probably make them go out of alignment or something).

The same force exist whichever orientation the spinning object is at but at 90 degrees to the plane in which it's spinning. So a horizontal disc will have force vertically upwards or downwards (depending on clockwise or anticlockwise spin) and a vertical disc will have force horizontally out to one side or the other. This doesn't put any 'strange' angular forces on the discs tho.
 
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lol, over the years ive had hard drives dangling every which way often only held on by the IDE and power cable itself, never done me any harm :D *pop* *smoke...*
 
locutus12 said:
lol, over the years ive had hard drives dangling every which way often only held on by the IDE and power cable itself, never done me any harm :D *pop* *smoke...*
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Haha I'm not the only one then :)
 
hard drives can be mounted in any angle, centripetal forces do not apply since there is a complete sealed vacuume inside the drive. no air so no problems.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
hard drives can be mounted in any angle, centripetal forces do not apply since there is a complete sealed vacuume inside the drive. no air so no problems.
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Sorry, but that's absolute rot! Nothing to do with air! They have gyroscopic forces in space too you know! eg. the moon! It doesn't come crashing into the Earth because the centripetal force balances the gravitational force.
 
nightwish said:
Sorry, but that's absolute rot! Nothing to do with air! They have gyroscopic forces in space too you know! eg. the moon! It doesn't come crashing into the Earth because the centripetal force balances the gravitational force.
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Yup, the vacuum has nothing to do with it. There are forces on the platter still, and the heads.
 
I don't even think it's a vacumm inside a hard disk in the first place - each HDD that I've used always had a small "do not block" hole on the top casing, probably indicating some kind of a breathing hole for the inside.
 
jhmaeng said:
I don't even think it's a vacumm inside a hard disk in the first place - each HDD that I've used always had a small "do not block" hole on the top casing, probably indicating some kind of a breathing hole for the inside.
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No it is vacuum sealed. It is to protect the disks from dust or particles which might land on the platter and cause data corruption.
 
A number of cheapo base units from major companies dont have cases with hard drive racks so they are mounted vertically. (Dell and Packard Bell to name 2) screwed to the front of the case!
 
Upside down should be fine. As long as the drive is mounted 0,90,180 or 270 degrees from the direction of gravity, then it should be fine. And hardrives are not vacuum sealed, thats a common misconception. As jhmaeng pointed out, they have filtered breathing holes.
 
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