Upside-down harddrives

[Halsafar]

Hey, I heard the other day that a HD should never be ran at odd angles (anything other than 0,90,180,270,360). Meaning it should always be flat, or standing perfect straight.

Is this true?

Also, I have a HD standing cuz I had no room left in my comp, and I notice after awhile it was struggling now and then, it would need to click in (clunk) alot when reading files off of it....So I found a place for it, unfortunatly it is upside-down (chipset facing up), but it is flat.

[dglienna]

I remember hearing that it was OK to run a desktop computer either on a desk or sideways on the ground, but only if it was new. If you ran it one way and then switched, this was bad as then dust can fall into the drive whereas dust will settle around but not on it while its running. Never heard anything about angles.
When building systems, I run drives without mounting them, and even left a system running at an angle. Never had any problem with it either.

[Lightning]

For home-use it doesn't matter that much, as long as you don't turn the drive while it is rotating. But best is to place it on 1 of the 4 sides, so up side down doesn't matter

[Halsafar]

That is what I figured. I never heard of that before and I've been around computers for as far back as I can remember.

It was probably refering to "do not shake a spinning drive. 2 hunks of metal colliding at 7200 rpm will make one hell`uva sound."

[Ideas Man]

Originally posted by dglienna
I remember hearing that it was OK to run a desktop computer either on a desk or sideways on the ground, but only if it was new. If you ran it one way and then switched, this was bad as then dust can fall into the drive whereas dust will settle around but not on it while its running. Never heard anything about angles.
When building systems, I run drives without mounting them, and even left a system running at an angle. Never had any problem with it either.

That shouldn't matter because they are sealed so that nothing can get inside them anyway.

[dglienna]

I thought thre were airvents that could clog up? I guess that they are independent of the disk drives, though.
right answer, wrong reason. go figure...

[Ideas Man]

No, no holes at all. That's why it's very hard to open them up. Because the distance between the head and the platter is soooo small, even the tiniest finger print or dust speck, would stuff it up, because they are bigger than the distance between the head and platter.

[JPicasso]

I always heard that if you format it flat, use it flat,
if you format it at 90° then use it at 90°.

but I've had several computers that were moved around and around and never had any HD problems.

so, just don't open it up and pour sand in it.

[Ideas Man]

Actually i can't see how it would possibly matter, all the head does is change the alignment of little particles on the platter, so it really shouldn't matter at all, as long as it's not on when you move it.