# Placing HDD vertical instead of horizontal



## Artas1984 (May 2, 2012)

In cases like Enermax SpineRex, what is the disadvantage of hard drives being placed so different? Does it cause faster HDD wearing? Additional noise? You experts say your thoughts!


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## Disparia (May 2, 2012)

No advantage or disadvantage? Hard drives have been positioned in every way imaginable, sometimes multiple orientations in the same case.


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## DarkOCean (May 2, 2012)

jizzler said:


> no advantage or disadvantage? Hard drives have been positioned in every way imaginable, sometimes multiple orientations in the same case.



+1


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## Disparia (May 2, 2012)

Thank you.

After thinking about it, I'll rephrase to say that there are no disadvantages to drive orientation -- _to the drive itself_, but orientation may or may not make things easier or more aesthetic. 

I remember some OEM cases way back in the day (HP, Dell, or someone else). The drive cage wa attached to the side of the case with the drives vertical so an extra-short IDE cable could be used. They did it to save money, but it also looked good. Many of us at TPU probably remember trying to make IDE cables look good for drives in the more common horizontal orientation - it didn't always happen 






Same could be said for the SpineRex now that I've looked at it. A motherboard with angled connectors + short cables would make for a slick looking drive install, at least for drives in the top bay.


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## Artas1984 (May 3, 2012)

Jizzler said:


> The drive cage wa attached to the side of the case with the drives vertical so an extra-short IDE cable could be used. They did it to save money, but it also looked good.
> 
> the top bay.



Ye, the pata cables sure looked fine with HDD bend 90 degree..

But what about the rotation of HDD plates? Can anybody tell if there is some wearing in vertical position compared to horizontal?


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## Athlon2K15 (May 3, 2012)

you would think that having a drive on its side would increase wear on the bearing assembly,i have been running my seagate 7200.11's on there side for a few years now and havent noticed any oddities


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## repman244 (May 3, 2012)

Artas1984 said:


> But what about the rotation of HDD plates? Can anybody tell if there is some wearing in vertical position compared to horizontal?



I doubt it would make a difference to worry about. Even most storage servers have vertical mounted disks to utilize all the available space.
Example:





I have never seen a HDD die from bearing wear (if it ran in normal conditions), or even seen any bearing wear on HDD's. The bearings are probably rated for 60 000+ hours of operations IMO.


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## Artas1984 (May 3, 2012)

Ok, so if there was any reason for my friend to sell his SpineRex, it was the vertical HDD bay - but now we are convinced enough that it is a no problem...


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## cadaveca (May 3, 2012)

Artas1984 said:


> Ok, so if there was any reason for my friend to sell his SpineRex, it was the vertical HDD bay - but now we are convinced enough that it is a no problem...





Yeah, nothing wrong with drives on their sides. got two that were run liek that for 4 years, stil lworking fine. Got one sitting a dock, with the connector end facing down in the dock, no problems with that either, after about 18 months.

Just don't leave them sitting at an angle.


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## Steevo (May 3, 2012)

They are made to run in any orientation, and the heads are tensioned to the correct amount at the factory to float on the air foil effect created by the disk spinning in any orientation.


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## shakeshuck (May 3, 2012)

I don't know if it's an old wives' tale, but I was always told HDD orientation didn't matter _as long as you didn't change it_.

In other words, if you've had it running for a year vertically don't change the mount to horizontal and expect it to complete its predicted lifecycle.

Fact or fiction... who knows?


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## Disparia (May 3, 2012)

shakeshuck said:


> I don't know if it's an old wives' tale, but I was always told HDD orientation didn't matter _as long as you didn't change it_.
> 
> In other words, if you've had it running for a year vertically don't change the mount to horizontal and expect it to complete its predicted lifecycle.
> 
> Fact or fiction... who knows?



I have 4 x 640GB WD Blacks that have been running for years now in a horizontal position. Once I get my new storage server in place, I'll flip them on their side and see how it goes


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## shakeshuck (May 4, 2012)

Jizzler said:


> I have 4 x 640GB WD Blacks that have been running for years now in a horizontal position. Once I get my new storage server in place, I'll flip them on their side and see how it goes



Yeah, I'd be interested in the outcome of that one. Cheers!


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## lilhasselhoffer (May 4, 2012)

A hard drive is anchored so that the spindle only has 1 degree of freedom, rotation about the axis perpendicular to the faces with the largest area.  As such, there is not benefit or disadvantage to running it at any orientation.  The anchoring is done by magneto-hydro dynamic bearings, which prevents damage based upon bearing wear and loss of lubricant from the bearings (not to mention this is the only bearing that works well at such a high rate of rotation).  As there is only one degree of freedom, gravity's forces are functionally ignorable.


The laymen's terms:
You're good to run a HDD at any orientation.  Just make sure that while operating you don't change that orientation abruptly.


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## theeldest (May 15, 2012)

shakeshuck said:


> I don't know if it's an old wives' tale, but I was always told HDD orientation didn't matter _as long as you didn't change it_.
> 
> In other words, if you've had it running for a year vertically don't change the mount to horizontal and expect it to complete its predicted lifecycle.
> 
> Fact or fiction... who knows?



Hmmm. I also have 4x 640 GB WD hard drives (blue, not black) that were running for 2-3 years in a horizontal setup that are not on their side. (see my main rig).

I've already had 1 die that I had to swap. I guess I'll let you know if any more die? (started with 7 of these drives but I'm only using 4 in my desktop)


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## AsRock (May 15, 2012)

AthlonX2 said:


> you would think that having a drive on its side would increase wear on the bearing assembly,i have been running my seagate 7200.11's on there side for a few years now and havent noticed any oddities



I think it does just by how much. I will always keep mine flat due to the fact that it keeps the weight even though out.


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## The Von Matrices (May 16, 2012)

shakeshuck said:


> I don't know if it's an old wives' tale, but I was always told HDD orientation didn't matter _as long as you didn't change it_.
> 
> In other words, if you've had it running for a year vertically don't change the mount to horizontal and expect it to complete its predicted lifecycle.
> 
> Fact or fiction... who knows?



It mattered for old drives where you had to set the C/H/S.  When you formatted the drive, each cylinder would be associated with a certain position of the actuator.  But if you formatted the drive in a horizontal position and then moved it into a vertical orientation, gravity would pull the actuator down, positioning it on a different cylinder and reading different data than expected.  Modern drives with LBAs correct for the inaccuracy of the actuator positioning and automatically reposition the actuator if it is on the wrong cylinder, which compensates for the effect of gravity,


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## The Von Matrices (May 16, 2012)

Modern drives do not care if they are mounted vertically or horizontally.  Think of all the external drives that Seagate and Western Digital manufacture - they are all meant to be used in a vertical orientation.


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