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Does running a hard drive sideways have an ill effect?

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Myhre

Member
Joined
May 9, 2004
Location
Little Rock, AR
I'm running two 10k raptors in Raid 0 and I'm just wondering if it's harder on a hard drive to run it sideways(i.e. in a hard drive cart) Wanting to know because I beleieve they would run cooler due to air flow if I mounted them sideways rather than stacked.
 
No (at least not with normal HDDs, it's possible there could be an exception with Raptors but not AFAIK), but I have heard that once you run a harddrive in a certain orientation you should keep it like that forever. On the other hand I have run HDDs on their side and normal for a long time (both ways) with no problems (by this I mean I have changed the orientation of the HDD with no problems).

Unless by stacked you mean they will be physicly touching each other, I don't think horizontal or vertical will make a differnce though. But if possible I would suggest putting some sort of fan on your HDDs (esp. if it's a Raptor, 10Krpm and that much money :eek: ), reguardless of how you mount them (if you are thinking verticle will allow the air to escape better, it won't make a differnce with a fan and I woud sill use one).
 
Yeah I have 2 80mm fans blowing over them at the moment. By stacked I mean one above the other, not touching. There is about a 1/4" space between the two hdd's. But I know if I mounted them sideways I could increase that space, allowing more air to run over the bottom of the hdd's.
 
I would put a fan at the front of the drive cage or just blowing at them from the front (if you have seen the Antec cases and how they have the fans in the cages, like those) and leave them the way they are. It's not really worth changing unless they are actually hot (my guess is that they are perfectly fine), so if you have a way to check their temps (MBM works for some SCSI and most IDE drives/controllers - I don't know about SATA; you just have to set it up a little) ~50C is the absoloute maximum from what I would allow (Maxtor says 55C operating temp to give you an idea), I like too keep mine under 40C. I just wouldn't change it unless you need because that rumor (about changing it's orientation after it's been used) may (or may not) be true.
 
Chainging the drive's orientation was only for really old hdds with the stepper motors. All new drives have voice coils so it makes no difference.
 
moz_21 said:
Chainging the drive's orientation was only for really old hdds with the stepper motors. All new drives have voice coils so it makes no difference.

Well in that case do what you feel comfortable with. But I would still set the fans up like I said and leave [horizontal] it becaue I think that they are cool enough like that.:D
 
CrashOveride said:
Well in that case do what you feel comfortable with. But I would still set the fans up like I said and leave [horizontal] it becaue I think that they are cool enough like that.:D

I think the fans are already set up the way your talking about....it's a lian li pc65, so it has the two front 80mm fans blowing through the hdd mount cage at the bottom.
 
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