Hard Drive Concerns

[c3p0]

I bought a new case about 2 months ago, and moved my Abit BE6, Pentium III 450 and a Maxtor 10 gig hard drive setup to this new case. All went fine except the HD seemed to fit a little too tight in the bay unless I turned it upside down. So I did, and all was well until about a week ago. My HD started making a clicking sound, and then the PC would lock up. I tried new cables and several other things. Nothing seemed to help until I tried turning it back over. I has been running for 2 days non-stop without a problem. Am I just new at this stuff....or do you really need to install the hard drive right side up. I didn't think it would really matter. Anybody ever heard of this before????

[Sixpac]

I can't really tell you but from my experience I rather wouldn't still the Hard Drive upside down. They are mechanical devices and the read/write arm which moves very fast.

I think you may have damaged the assembly which allows the arm to move back and forth.

Have you tried flipping the HD around...

I would send a post to the HD manufacturer. I would power down the HD (or use a HD parking software, parks the W/R arm back into place) and give the drive a hard shake.

No really.

Plug it back in and try it out.

Hopefully the W/R head didn't bounce on one of the platters and scratched the surface.

[Sixpac]

I can't really tell you but from my experience I rather wouldn't still the Hard Drive upside down. They are mechanical devices and the read/write arm which moves very fast.

I think you may have damaged the assembly which allows the arm to move back and forth.

Have you tried flipping the HD around...

I would send a post to the HD manufacturer. I would power down the HD (or use a HD parking software, parks the W/R arm back into place) and give the drive a hard shake.

No really.

Plug it back in and try it out.

Hopefully the W/R head didn't bounce on one of the platters and scratched the surface.

[Sixpac]

I can't really tell you but from my experience I rather wouldn't still the Hard Drive upside down. They are mechanical devices and the read/write arm which moves very fast.

I think you may have damaged the assembly which allows the arm to move back and forth.

Have you tried flipping the HD around...

I would send a post to the HD manufacturer. I would power down the HD (or use a HD parking software, parks the W/R arm back into place) and give the drive a hard shake.

No really.

Plug it back in and try it out.

Hopefully the W/R head didn't bounce on one of the platters and scratched the surface.

[c3p0]

Sixpac, thanks for your quick reply. I have flipped the drive over and it seems to be working fine at the moment. Like I said in my original post...the drive has been running for more than 2 days straight with not a single problem. Before I flipped it right side up, it would run for about 10 or 15 minutes and then it would start to click and then freeze the system. Hopefully I didn't damage it. Time will tell.

[Fingers]

I can't say what the effect of an upside down drive is, but I've got a 20 month old Micron Millennia that was shipped with 2 8.4Gb drives...one is upside down. I never gave it any thought. I'm sure they were only put in that way to make the cable fit nicely.


**Edit** You got me thinking so I went looking:
Hard Drive Mounting Positions

---------------------------------------------

February 1998
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.
http://www.westerndigital.com/service/tip_dir/tip0298.html

I didn't find anything at Seagate, Maxtor, or Quantum during my quick search.



[This message has been edited by Fingers (edited 09-30-2000).]

[c3p0]

Thanks Fingers for the info. I didn't think it made any difference how you mounted the things either. But something killed this ata66, 10 Gig, Maxtor....YES IT'S DEAD. It will still boot and run for awhile, but it won't be long before it won't boot either. I thought for awhile there I had saved it. But just a few minutes after my last post here it started again. I had an older WD hard drive laying around and I was able to Ghost it. I'm using the new Ghosted WD hard drive now to do this post. All is well so far with this drive. If anyone finds any info about the recommended mounting for hard drives I would appreciate a post.

Thanks!

P.S. Anyone have a good IBM (7200 rpm) drive they want to sell?

[This message has been edited by h2o (edited 09-30-2000).]

[Fingers]

Hey, if you didn't retrieve all your info from the drive before it died, check this out:

How to revive a hard drive? http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/computing_life/40831

I just found it while doing a Google search for "upside down hard drives", so I will not be held responsible for any damage or personal loss that might occur from using any of these revival techniques. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[c3p0]

Thanks again Fingers for the info. Seems most of that stuff I have read somewhere before. I was able to ghost the drive to another older drive. So no problem with losing data. I just hate to lose the drive. It was only one year old. It is not officially dead, just retired. Cannot trust it to run more than 15 minutes. Anyway, thanks again.

[otheos]

If the drive is still under guarantee you should return it and they WILL replace it!
All hard drives can be mounted in any position. I had 4 HD's mounted vertically (the back side where the cables connect facing up) for 2 years. Nothing wrong with it.

[MiKe85]

Good to know guys http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif