Does hard disk position affect its performance and health?

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a cheap etek case and I want to place my new hard drive. The problem is that, my old hard drive is tilted like 150 Degrees since it does not fit in that case (The HDD is smaller) and it has only one screw from one side. And my new hard drive is the same size as the old, which means it will be positioned the same way. (Both are SATA disks 3.5')

Here is a picture I drew using paint (I am a bad painter in real life too ):

As you can see, the hard disk can't reach the other side so that it can be held with another screw.
I can't just put it down in the holder since it will move a lot and might fall on the motherboard.


So is it safe that the hard drive is tilted/rotated? Will it affect performance?

 

[Spectre694]

They angle of the HDD will not affect it's performance or life span. Having it fall stands a pretty good chance of damage though.

 

[JPNpower]

Dang...

I would suggest you to buy a new case in the near future, and to backup you data just in case...

Hard drive orientation doesn't matter. Modern hard drives are designed to withstand all rotations with absolutely no problem. If you want to test, have the hard drive run and rotate it slowly with your hand. If the sound changes while you rotate it, you have a crappy drive, and reliability WILL suffer from bad angle. But I doubt that you have such a bad drive.

Hard drive health is most affected by temperature. As long as you keep it relatively cool, it should be fine

 

[Guest]

Dang...

I would suggest you to buy a new case in the near future, and to backup you data just in case...

Hard drive orientation doesn't matter. Modern hard drives are designed to withstand all rotations with absolutely no problem. If you want to test, have the hard drive run and rotate it slowly with your hand. If the sound changes while you rotate it, you have a crappy drive, and reliability WILL suffer from bad angle. But I doubt that you have such a bad drive.

Hard drive health is most affected by temperature. As long as you keep it relatively cool, it should be fine

Thank you for the details!

I bought a new Western Digital Black 1TB, my old one was a Seagate 80GB SATA, so I don't think they are crappy 😛

My hard drive temps never exceeded 40C (Under copying or extracting).

I will surely get a new case when I finish my exams.

Thank you both!