Harddrives on side

[wyzest1]

Are there any long term effects of mounting harddrives on their side.

Yes i have seen it done by others

but does anyone feel that they should be like this?

[CAMS]

None.

[thormania]

what about upside down

[anlashok]

On todays new hdd's (well anything from past few years) you can mount it pretty much anyway you want just dont have it moving when in use

[SLATYE]

Modern HDDs are really quite tough. Most can take a fair amount of shock even while running, and running for prolonged periods at any cangle won't hurt them.

Actually, I've been very surprised when I found an old stepper-motor drive (20Mb) which also works fine regardless of how it's mounted.

[@sia@home]

how about heat and harddrives? i know lots of people say that overheating hdds are bad?

[SLATYE]

Originally posted by @sia@home
how about heat and harddrives? i know lots of people say that overheating hdds are bad?

Yes, heat can play a fairly big role. HDDs can generate a fair bit of heat, and they don't like to be overheated. They're normally okay just with passive cooling, although a slow fan blowing over them never hurts.

[Atari]

i would definatly say heat kills hard-drives. Most brands get a bit warm under normal operating which is fine. But ive seen many dead drives come from cases clogged with dust, and only a p/s fan venting the heat.

So i would say its beneficial to have some air moving across them, but not critical if u have a decent case.

[@sia@home]

cause my raptors are still stacked and havent really had any problems yet
im worried they will die though as they get mighty hot. and im not prepared to put a fan where they are. no room, too much noise etc. i was thinking about making some aluminium drive sinks though

heh thats what the 5yr warranty is for though :P

[Atari]

@sia@home you might be lucky and the raptors will survive but i would definatly look at doing something about it if there getting that hot. The drives might hav a warranty, but what about ur data? and the hassle it causes...

Look into the 'hard-drive coolers', they screw onto the bottom of your drive and have a small fan that blows air onto the underside of the motor and across the drive. They work very well, and only take up a small amount of vertical space.

[Myne_h]

Way I figure it a car engine runs at just over 100C and it takes a while to warm up and there's enough thermal expansion for clearances to be an important issue on a per-country basis.

What does this have to do with hdds? Well, I am just illistrating that thermal expansion is reasonably significant so on a device with tolerances as close as a HDD I'd really try to keep thermal expansion to a minimum.

Personally I have my hdd's generously spaced with no active cooling. They dont get much more than warm-to-touch so I'm happy with that. If they were borderline burning me I'd seriously consider their placement and possibly a low rpm fan just to get some airflow.

[Iceman]

It's the chips burning out that you have to worry about more then the platters expanding

[@sia@home]

ohh really

cause in that case the chips on the bottom are cool to touch, thats a good thing right

[Myne_h]

I tend to disagree. Aside from the Quantum 6.4g, I dont know of any other drives, or even IC's that are prone to failure. Ever burnt a sound card? Didnt think so. However hard drives are the ONLY mechanical device in our PC's and they are also the most likely to fail.
Coincidence? I think not.
Heads float some stupidly tiny amount above the platter on a cushion of air a few molecules high that's created by the platters as they spin. They have very little in the way of up and down movement and what they do have is based on the flexing of a very very thin piece of metal that acts somewhat like a spring.

So as the platter gets wider through thermal expansion, the gap between the head and the platter decreases and the tension on the spring holding the head increases. Doesnt take a genius to figure that too much heat is bad.

[Iceman]

Originally posted by Myne_h
I tend to disagree. Aside from the Quantum 6.4g, I dont know of any other drives, or even IC's that are prone to failure. Ever burnt a sound card? Didnt think so. However hard drives are the ONLY mechanical device in our PC's and they are also the most likely to fail.

Most *dead* hard drives I have seen in recent years have been controler board failure. Sound cards are different in that a) most of the processing is done via drivers and thus by the systems CPU and b) none that I have seen have high speed motors strapped to them that are rotating metal discs at anything up to 10,000 rotations per minute, that's over 166 times per second. Thus, sound cards (and their IC's) don't get as hot.

I highly doubt thermal expansion is responsible for the heads touching the platters.