What is better for a hard drive

danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
edited June 2003 in Hardware
I have a question. Which position is better for a drive over its life. Horizontal or Vertical... my Lian-Li's hard drive cage puts them in the vertical.

I was just wondering because of the heads and motor if being vertical will wear them out faster.

Comments

  • stoopidstoopid Albany, NY New
    edited June 2003
    Vertically the head would be fighting gravity ever so slightly. I don't think either way favors the motor.

    I don't think the effect of verticle placement has enough effect on a drive's already typically short lifespan (5 years or less).
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    The actuator is mechanically locked in position.. Way back in the day they used to worry about this, when HDs were like 80mb and down (80 MEG, not gig) but then I remember back when they were saying that the "newer drives" (post 100mb-era) had voice-coil actuators that prevented the vertical-alignment problem. At this point in time, enterprise-level servers are shipped with drives in both orientations, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited June 2003
    I also remember seeing a file somewhere for those old stepper motor drives that you would have to run everytime before you shut the computer off in order for it to park the heads.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited June 2003
    with today's drives, the only thing I've heard is that if you run them one way for a while, leave them that way because the bearings will wear in a certain pattern and constantly moving the drive causes that pattern to change and thus the bearings wear out faster...
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