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Hard Drives question
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Mar 13, 2019 19:32:24   #
BebuLamar
 
Obviously they can be used either way but I always feel it's better to use them in horizontal orientation.

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Mar 13, 2019 19:48:05   #
Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.
 
BebuLamar wrote:
Obviously they can be used either way but I always feel it's better to use them in horizontal orientation.


I believe the moral to the story is, use them vertical or horizontal, but do not change the position after years of wearing in one position ... especially with crusty old MFM drives ;)

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Mar 14, 2019 06:55:10   #
jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY
 
GENorkus wrote:
Something I thought about around 20 years ago just popped up in my head. It concerns hard drives.

Does it really matter if a hard drive is horizontal or vertical when in use?

In other words, do the bearings and drive in general last longer standing up or laying flat and why do you feel that way?

A question for the curious!


I used to think the same thing - about thirty years ago. Surprisingly, it doesn't matter. They have found a way to eliminate gravity inside the hermetically-sealed hard drive case.

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Mar 14, 2019 06:55:50   #
jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY
 
Dngallagher wrote:
I believe the moral to the story is, use them vertical or horizontal, but do not change the position after years of wearing in one position ... especially with crusty old MFM drives ;)


So it's not like rotating tires on a car, then.

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Mar 14, 2019 08:28:02   #
Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada
 
GENorkus wrote:
Does it really matter if a hard drive is horizontal or vertical when in use?


Some good advice... HDDs are the cheapest form of 'mass storage'. Don't move them if they are in operation for gyro reasons noted above; if not in operation don't move them any more than you have to. Horizontal or vertical is not an issue; I understand you don't want them on an incline.

Dik

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Mar 14, 2019 09:14:32   #
BillFeffer Loc: Adolphus, KY
 
Wow! IBM XT. Eons ago. I opted to spend just a couple of dollars more to go SSDs. I just installed an M.2 1TB. Very fast. I highly recommend it if your motherboard has a slot or use an adapter.

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Mar 14, 2019 09:33:08   #
Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada
 
BillFeffer wrote:
I just installed an M.2 1TB. Very fast. I highly recommend it if your motherboard has a slot or use an adapter.


and PCIe M.2s are nearly 5 times faster than SATA ones.

My latest build has two 512GB PCIe M.2s... one for OS, drivers, and apps that default to drive C:. All other apps on drive D:. Bigger M.2s are faster than smaller ones.

Dik

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Mar 14, 2019 09:33:47   #
NCMtnMan Loc: N. Fork New River, Ashe Co., NC
 
Dngallagher wrote:
Many moons ago, I recall an IBM XT sitting flat on a desk at work, it worked fine for years, the user cleared off the desk one day and placed the XT in a stand on the floor on its side to save room. I was called because it no longer would boot up, the hard drive showed it was unreadable. Placing the unit back on the desk horizontally resoved the boot up question. Seems that gravity does have an effect on wearing bearings, in a vertical position the drive plates were no longer in the same position, changing to horizontal again put the plates back into the position they had worn into apparently.

Of course this was a much different drive then those today - probably an old MFM drive, probably with many hundreds of dollars with at least 10 megabytes of storage space :)
Many moons ago, I recall an IBM XT sitting flat on... (show quote)


No comparison between the drives back then and now.

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Mar 14, 2019 09:46:26   #
BillFeffer Loc: Adolphus, KY
 
My XT had a huge 20mb drive. About one RAW file.

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Mar 14, 2019 10:48:23   #
Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada
 
BillFeffer wrote:
My XT had a huge 20mb drive. About one RAW file.


For a long time I had a double height 80 Meg hard drive... MFM interface. It was $8000 at the time.

Dik

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Mar 14, 2019 11:19:30   #
rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona
 
Perhaps it was a locational issue. Did you try to boot it sitting flat on the floor where the stand was? It might have been a gravitational anomaly that was the problem.
--Bob

Dngallagher wrote:
Many moons ago, I recall an IBM XT sitting flat on a desk at work, it worked fine for years, the user cleared off the desk one day and placed the XT in a stand on the floor on its side to save room. I was called because it no longer would boot up, the hard drive showed it was unreadable. Placing the unit back on the desk horizontally resoved the boot up question. Seems that gravity does have an effect on wearing bearings, in a vertical position the drive plates were no longer in the same position, changing to horizontal again put the plates back into the position they had worn into apparently.

Of course this was a much different drive then those today - probably an old MFM drive, probably with many hundreds of dollars with at least 10 megabytes of storage space :)
Many moons ago, I recall an IBM XT sitting flat on... (show quote)

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Mar 14, 2019 11:22:47   #
Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.
 
NCMtnMan wrote:
No comparison between the drives back then and now.


Agreed 100%

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Mar 14, 2019 11:23:48   #
Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.
 
rmalarz wrote:
Perhaps it was a locational issue. Did you try to boot it sitting flat on the floor where the stand was? It might have been a gravitational anomaly that was the problem.
--Bob


Hmmmm, you know, it was always cold in that one spot as well....you may be onto something!


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Mar 14, 2019 11:25:51   #
Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.
 
Dikdik wrote:
For a long time I had a double height 80 Meg hard drive... MFM interface. It was $8000 at the time.

Dik


As Tiny Elvis would say, “man, that thing was HUGE”!


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Mar 14, 2019 11:59:55   #
cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA
 
Some HDD units do have recommended orientations. Check with the MFR for your specific model. Most of today's drives are fine either horizontally or vertically oriented. Both my iMac and MBP have SSDs so no issue. The drives in my Synology NAS systems are vertical, and some have been running over 5 years. Best of luck.

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