Hard Drive Install: Horizontal or Vertical?

[crazyray]

Is there a clear advantage to one over the other? My case has room/ hardware to do either. Some have suggested cooling may be improved with the vertical ("on its side") orientation. Anyone?

[OuTpaTienT]

Shouldn't matter either way.

[Roy]

According to Western Digital, A common question we receive concerns the mounting restrictions for Western Digital hard drives. Basically, you can mount your WD Caviar hard drive in any X, Y, or Z axis direction without affecting the drive’s performance or operation. In other words, the drive will function normally whether it is mounted sideways or upside down.
I prefer horizontal mounting because I think the platter bearings might last a few million revolutions longer. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[Win_98]

Any drive will function correctly whether it sideway or horizonal but some do not function at all when upside down on it belly.

[randy48]

horizontal is best, in "the old days", mounting a drive vertical would void the warranty. The platters are spinning several thousand revolutions per minute, mounted vertical the little bit of extra weight on the bearings causes extra stress, causing the drive to wear out prematurely.

[OuTpaTienT]

randy, you must be talking the REALLY old days, because I know as far back as the 386 days it's been fine to mount the HD's vertical.

[randy48]

Yup! Back when Zenith was just pushing by Commadore, Tandy, and TI http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif When a 20 MB hard drive was the greatest invention of the century. I've still got the old DOCs up in the attic http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[bdunn]

One drive I have doesn't operate vertically. BIOS can't find it. It works fine horizontally though. There always was something strange about seagate drives though.

[NDC]

Right side up, upside down, sideways, it doesn't matter how you put the drive these days! LOL http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Warthog]

My Dell hd is mounted vertically. Once I get my new IBM hd, I will put it as Master in Dell's (vertical) slot and put the Dell in the other bay (horizontal).

Warthog

[Ironforge]

I have had both vertical and horizontal drives installed in my machine at home...

currently they are all horizontal because that's how the drive cage in my case are..

however at work I have had them at many angles... a lot of times they are just dangling in the middle of the case with only the power connector and the IDE cable holding them up http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/biggrin.gif