Since I heard a blurb about it several years ago, something I have always kept in the back of my mind are observations of any noticeable impact the orientation of hard drives have in their respective systems. While my methodology is certainly nothing scientific I have not really experienced anything which would lead me to believe it makes a difference. After doing a bit of Internet research, it seems this a fairly popular topic with no true conclusive evidence hard drive orientation makes any difference.

On a interesting note, however, I have noticed that almost every modern system (servers and desktop) I have seen aligns the hard drive horizontally. It seems the major manufacturers would build their systems such that the hard drive would last as long as possible (since they are providing warranties on those systems). Then again, maybe this is coincidence.

I have also had a friend of mine who works on systems for a living tell me that once a hard drive has been running aligned a certain way for a long time, it is best to keep it that way (i.e. don’t take a hard drive which as been vertical and rotate it to work horizontally) as over time gravity can cause slight alterations in the both the platters and needles which can cause problems if the drive is flipped. Again, there is nothing to fall back on here but just a theory.

The bottom line is it doesn’t seem to matter, but if you have any experience with this subject please share in the comments.

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