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Mounting Hard Drive on side

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Name: Miller
Date: June 23, 2006 at 03:01:36 Pacific
OS: XP Pro SP2
CPU/Ram: PIII 1.0 / 512
Product: Dell Optiplex GX150
Comment:

I have an Optiplex GX150 minitower case. I bought two hard drive coolers, but I don't think I have space for them. Would it be safe to use another mount and put the hard drives on their side?



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Response Number 1
Name: street1
Date: June 23, 2006 at 03:34:36 Pacific
Reply:

Yes it would.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/howto/ata_install_tshoot.html


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Response Number 2
Name: ham30
Date: June 23, 2006 at 13:21:10 Pacific
Reply:

I don't know what you have in mind. Vertical is perfectly ok, but give them a little space. Drives can overheat if packed too close together.

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!
Sorry, I do not check for private messages


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Response Number 3
Name: Mike Newcomb
Date: June 23, 2006 at 13:35:08 Pacific
Reply:

There have been many previous threads on this subject.

One school of thought says it is ok, the other (including myself) says not.

Experience shows that drives mounted incorrectly (sideways, inverted, too close) fail quicker than those that are correctly positioned.

Good Luck. Keep us posted.


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Response Number 4
Name: Miller
Date: June 24, 2006 at 16:17:02 Pacific
Reply:

I have HDD coolers becuase I don't want the drives to fail too quick. But I'd like to avoid case modding.


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Response Number 5
Name: smitty308
Date: June 24, 2006 at 19:04:22 Pacific
Reply:

Not to say that Dell does things correctly, but they have some computers that the hard drives standing on end.


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Response Number 6
Name: Miller
Date: June 25, 2006 at 09:31:27 Pacific
Reply:

The hard drive in my compaq has the hard drive mounted vertically. Has been working for five years like that.


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Response Number 7
Name: mR_Slug
Date: June 26, 2006 at 04:55:43 Pacific
Reply:

You can mount a drive in any direction you like, on it's side on its end or whatever. Most modern drives are happy if mounted at an angle (look at laptop drives).

There's no point mounting a drive at an angle in a desktop because it will take up more space. Because of this, desktop drives are so rarely mounted like this and there is little conclusive evidence to show that this will have a bad effects. Personally I would steer clear of this because there is little evidence to show that this will be ok.

As for mounting a drive so one side is level with the floor, just look at servers and raid arrays. Nearly all large raid arrays mount their drives on the side.

If you look up the technical specifications for the drive it will usually say that the drive can be mounted this way.


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