Do they like it best on their sides or lying flat?

[shadow]

Hard drives of course!

Now what were you thinking...hmmm?

I have a case where the HD mounts on it's side. So what is best or does it matter, on the side or flat like in most cases?

PW

[Dominus]

I think the only bad way to mount a hard drive is upside down, but I can't be 100% sure on that, as I have never tested one in that way.

Long story short, there is no difference if you have your HDD mounted on it's side, or flat. If there was, I doubt cases would be designed that way.

[plucky duck]

It doesn't really matter, I've had mine 360* @ all directions testing if it'll crash, but to my surprise it didn't. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Chi

[happyhamster]

Several years ago I installed my first HD upside down, and it worked for several months until I figured out it was wrong. After that, it worked fine for a few years, so position prolly doesn't matter.

[Gene C.]

I also have had them in every way possible. the only real concern is the position of it.

just make sure it can get air around it. incase the heat builds up in the case to much. other than that. you should be ok.

[happyhamster]

I decided to clear this up once and for all, so a lil' research turned up this info:
Western Digital's official note (http://www.westerndigital.com/service/tip_dir/tip0298.html):

<quote>

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.

Of course, the physical design of your system may limit the positions in which the drive can be mounted. However, in all cases, you should mount the drive with all four screws for good grounding. Also ensure that there is enough air space around the drive for adequate air flow, and avoid mounting the drive near sources of excessive heat (such as some CPUs).

</quote>

The issue seems to come up from time to time, so one guy on usenet actually emailed IBM:
<quote>
Author: SteveR (please@see.sig)
Date: Oct 6 1999
Sources: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage



A terse response from IBM support said that their drives can be
mounted in any attitude.

SteveR
m.a.i.l.t.o.:
s.r.r.2 a.t r.c.n d.o.t c.o.m
</quote>

Since two vendors stated orientation doesn't matter, I'm assuming this is true for the rest of them. Place 'em as you want.

[shadow]

Thanks for that Happy.

I see that mounting position is not important but some of you mentioned "upside down"

Now what exactly would be upside down?
I normally mount a HDD with the open or pcb side up since that generates some heat and I figure that heat should be allowed to dissipate as easily as possible.
So is that right side up or upside down?

[hd581]

Be careful, the older HD's may have probs being mounted contrary to the way they were formatted. Seems like they put them any way they want these days.

[This message has been edited by hd581 (edited 04-27-2000).]

[happyhamster]

Shadow,

That's how I mounted my first HD(chips up), and for various reasons later decided it was in fact upside down. The two main reasons were that:

- If you look closely, in manuals companies almost always picture HDs label up, chips down. Look it up in your HD manual, or see, for example, WD Installation Guide (http://www.westerndigital.com/acrobat/dlgdisty.pdf). So, I assume label-up is their supposed right orientation.

- With chips down, much less dust settles on HD board. Dust being one of the worst chips' enemies, it makes sense to mount them as to minimize the amount of settled dust.

I always mount mine label up, chips down.

[krusty the klown]

Our department was asked to sort out 3 out of 4 broken PCs. They were HP Vectras and none could see their HDD's.

All disks were WD Caviars and the only way they could be mounted was upside down (circuit board uppermost). All of the disks had seized. I don't know if this was a dodgy batch, or what... but it deterred me from putting them upside down.

Also, my neighbour's PC suffered the same problem - no HDD, so I thumped it and sure enough, the HDD span up and it worked. Closer inspection revealed that the HDD (Seag8) was upside down.

All 5 PCs had 2 things in common - they were not used very often (my neighbour's PC was fine if she used it every day, but stuck if she didn't use it for 2 weex) and the disks were upside down.

Please note - I am only giving my personal experiences, not saying that anyone is wrong http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Krusty.

[tonym]

krusty,

You're on to something there. I used to work for a computer company that used oodles (the technical term for lots and lots) of HDDs in fault-tolerant configurations. These were big, mainframe-class systems in critical applications (banks, Wall St., credit-cards, phone company, etc.). High reliability was the desired trait of the drives, otherwise a lot of service engineer calls were necessary to replace wayward drives. All the drive manufacturers told us that it was highly desirable to mount the drives horizontally (chips down) or verically (either possible orientation), BUT NEVER horizontally, upside down (chips up).
We did extensive life and stress testing in all orientations, and the upside down drives siezed-up ~45% (at 25C) of the time and within 500 hours of the start of testing. This only got worse at higher temperatures.
The reason we speculated this happened was the mass of the platters was pulling on the spindle bearing and heating them up and causing the lubrication to fail prematurely. The high-level drive folks were tight-lipped about this, but the apps. engineers concurred with our findings.

So, when I mount an HDD in any system, I always mount it chips down!


Tony

[hd581]

Does chips-down necessarily indicate the components within the hard disk are "upside down"? I have an disk that w/ the chips-up but that's how the manual has it oriented, and otherwise I'd have to twist the SCSI cable funny.

[shadow]

On what I've seen here I have turned my new WD HDD "rightside up", or chips down.
I can't believe it makes that much difference or these manufacturers who give a 3 year warranty would label the thing "this side up" or put an arrow, something to say there is a proper way to mount the HDD.
But maybe just I added extra life to my HDD, who knows.

PW