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| Thread ID: 43889 | 2004-03-30 10:49:00 | Which way is up (with a hard drive)? | aperahama (1786) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 226062 | 2004-03-30 10:49:00 | I noted in the article (in the latest PC World) on NZ assembled pc "Local Heroes" that Stan Low commented that one "... local PC which had the hard drive installed upside down." I have no idea which way is up for a hard drive, there is no indication on the drive nor have I ever seen a note in the instruction as to which way up a drive should be installed. Does anybody know which way is up (does it matter)? |
aperahama (1786) | ||
| 226063 | 2004-03-30 10:53:00 | as far as i know it makes no real diffrence. I have always put hard drive in so the IDE/board side is down and the lable side is up. |
robsonde (120) | ||
| 226064 | 2004-03-30 11:00:00 | i don't think it really matters. some pc's have there harddrives mounted sideways. the only thing i prefer is to make the electronics side be away from where it will collect dust. ie with normal pc is electonics side down. | tweak'e (174) | ||
| 226065 | 2004-03-30 11:05:00 | I've always thought that it doesn't matter but Mr Low uses it as a excuses not to buy locally assembled PCs (and he's the IT manager) | aperahama (1786) | ||
| 226066 | 2004-03-30 20:49:00 | It used to matter sometimes, if the drive was formatted in one orientation outside of the machine, and then installed in another orientation, because of "droop" in the head servo system not quite compensating for change in gravitational forces on the heads. It is probably still good practice to format a drive in its installed position. |
Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 226067 | 2004-03-31 03:06:00 | It used to matter with MFM drives. This was not because of droop in the head servo system, Terry. ;-) There was no servo system. The heads were moved by one step of a stepping motor per track. (Just like floppy drives). Upside down was less of a problem than sideways. :D The main reason for one preferred "way up" of a drive would be to avoid dust deposits on the circuit board. The gravity problem of setting motor head actuators was why "low level formatting" was needed. It became a reasonablly common fix for disk problems ... and of course is sometimes still recommended by the ignorant as a fix for IDE drives, in which it is usually impossible (it's a factory operation) --- and has many other components ... like programming an eeprom with the information on where the replacement tracks are for bad areas ... as well as laying down the servo tracks which are used to steer the voice-coil servos. A "low level" format of an IDE drive will rewrite the sector headers, and maybe test the surfaces. If you found software to do a real low-level format you would make the drive unusable. ;-) |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 226068 | 2004-03-31 03:28:00 | You know how an interview over a phone can sometimes convey the wrong info? Well this is one of them . What I verbally said to Andrea was, "I had a few locally assembled PCs with floppy drives installed upside down" . (or at least I think that is what I said or try to convey) . Unfortunately I did not get a copy of the article before it was printed therefore I could not correct the statement . Needless to say I stop buying from that company that supplied the incorrectly installed floppy drive . Also to correct a few impressions . I continue to buy locally assembled PC up and until the demise of PC Direct, these included - Eclipse, TL Systems, Compucons etc . After the demise of PC Direct - and the subsequent discontinuations of Gateway support in NZ, I started buying Compaqs . Best regards Stan |
nzStan (440) | ||
| 226069 | 2004-03-31 04:07:00 | > I've always thought that it doesn't matter but Mr Low > uses it as a excuses not to buy locally assembled PCs > (and he's the IT manager) I apologies if you had mistakenly thought that I had to come with an excuse to stop buying locally assembled PCs. There is no doubt there are some very high standard locally assembled PCs just as there are some dubious backyard operators. Some companies (and IT Managers) continue to buy locally assembled PCs (all power to them), others like me have decided to buy international brands, either because of quality/heavy discounts due to high purchase volume or because of a globally imposed hardware standard from head office. Regards Stan |
nzStan (440) | ||
| 226070 | 2004-03-31 04:38:00 | Upside down floppies is a diffferent can of worms. ;-) I've had a number of computers with floppies mounted vertically. Which side is "up" then? I always felt that the top of floppy to the right was right. There again, the DEC RX50 5¼ dual floppy drive mounted horizontally, but the top slot took the floppy label side up, and the bottom one took it label side down. :O |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 226071 | 2004-03-31 04:54:00 | The story behind the upside down floppy drive was quite funny. This was back in the early 90s (386SX etc). The said company had made use of the National goverment offer of free labour (paid by the goverment). What they did was line these guys up, give each of them a screw driver and told to screw in the disk drives etc. You can't really blame these people, they weren't familiar with computers let alone know which way is up for a fully enclosed 5.25" drive. | nzStan (440) | ||
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