Does anybody know if placing hard drives edge to edge would affect their performance or lifepsan? I plan on stacking three drives vertically with their long edges extremely close if not actually touching. I know that placing them vertically isn't a problem, I'm just slightly concerned about effects from their touching. Heat shouldn't be much of a problem since there will be some fans blowing directly over one side of them. Here's a poorly excecuted ASCII depiction of my planned layout (Os represent the center of 120mm fans): Code: ___ ___ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |___| O |___| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |___| O |___| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |___| |___|
As long as you have proper cooling for your drives because keep in mind that an hdd all by itself will produce a little heat and normally depends on it being screwed into a large metal case or bracket to provide some heat dissapation. With that being said you may want to consider the vibrations that HDD's normally produce. Often times these vibrations are absorbed by whatever mounting gear you have. Even a computer case itself will absorb them. What you may want to do is space them so you can have some sort of rubber grommit between them to prevent vibrations from one drive damaging another. Not that I honestly think it will make a difference its just that with HDD's you never really can be too careful with your data... yanno?
As for heat dissapation, the sides opposite the fans will be screwed into aluminum sheet using the four mounting holes on the bottom of the drive. This way the sides facing the fans will be cooled via convection and their opposite sides will have heat dissapated through the aluminum. I'll try to ensure that they don't touch in order to reduce the possibility of vibration induced damage. Thanks for the advice. On a bit of a side note, all of this planning is for the future. I only have three drives right now so until I acquire a fifth, I won't have to worry about any of this.
i would try and have a small gap (a millimetre maybe) between the drives to try and stop any vibrations from passing through to the one next to it as for cooling, you have the largest surface area of the drives open and air flowing over it, so it should be more than ok
You're problems will be with vibrations, either setting up a resonance or vibrating another drive while read/write which could cause a loss of data (possibly), and with heat dissapation. Easiest way to solve the heat is to have some sort of sink attached to each drive, as you already have planned. Easiest way to solve the vibration possible problem would be to have a set of o rings between each drive. Would stop vibration from transferring between each drive. plus would look quite cool IMO Jaz_knos
yea.. i wouldnt really like to have my harddrives vibrating and smashing each other up.. but otherwise its a good space saving idea.. however i would make sure that nothing touched the circuitry on one side of the HDD (some harddrives are completly covered) because this part is extremely sensitive to a bang or two. anyways good luck
You'll be fine. HDD's die slowly and they only really every die from being dropped or having too much heat. You can kill a HDD in a year by stuffing it in a box of foam and trapping all the heat in. Or you can kill it in 5 years with continuous use. I figure I'll upgrade pretty quick So I don't worry about them too much. I think with the fan placement you wont have any issues whatsoever.
