Does vertical position affect the lifespan or integrity of a hard drive

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I've noticed on many small PC cases that the hard drives are installed vertically. In midi cases, towers and others of a larger housing, they are in the horizontal position.

What impact on a hard drive does a vertical position have? Does it affect the life? Is it more prone to errors?

(Not of SSDs (solid-state drive), just plain hard drive with all its mechanical parts inside.)

Best Answer

It shouldn't matter which way you do it these days. But there's one possible caveat of making it vertical:

Under situations where cooling is at premium and you don't have the means to increase cooling of your system, mounting the disk horizontally with the label facing upwards could be seen as an advantage, since heat rises away from the disk surface more efficiently than if the disk was mounted vertically. But even so, any impact on performance or disk lifetime would only be noticeable in years to come. Just thought nevertheless to make this note.

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