Mounting Hard Drives

AndyC · 9 Feb 2006 at 18:28

At a customer site today and someone wanted to know if it’s OK to put the computer unit on its side and would this effect the HD as it's no longer horizontal.

TBH I have no idea, I know a lot of servers HD's are mounted on their side. The chassis is designed as a desktop and not a tower with the drive horizontal. It’s a sata not that makes any difference I know.

Any thoughts ?

yourmomma · 9 Feb 2006 at 18:57

Googled for ya =
Old hard drives always had specific requirements for mounting while
most modern hard drives can be mounted in any orientation. Some
modern hard drives still have mounting restrictions; the only way to
be sure is to read the documentation that comes with the drive or
contact the manufacturer directly and ask. Restrictions may be model
specific so be sure you know the exact model number of your drive. A
common misconception is that it is always safe to mount the circuit
board side up, this is not the case. When in doubt, look it up.

Failure to follow the mounting instructions can result in a shortened
lifetime.

AndyC · 9 Feb 2006 at 19:35

Cheers for that, had one of these days today

that would make sense as each drive is designed for certain applications and specs.

semi-pro waster · 10 Feb 2006 at 10:52

It doesn't make a huge deal of difference in my experience however it is best not to change the orientation of a drive once you have used it either vertically or horizontally for a while and certainly don't change it while the drive is on.

badbob · 10 Feb 2006 at 13:03

oops wrong thread

jhmaeng · 10 Feb 2006 at 13:51

From what I gather, it's fine as long as it's completely horizontal or vertical. However, (as is the case with CDs) anything in between (i.e. a weird 45 degree angle) is not desirable.