Placing a hard drive on its side

[bleecher]

I just bought this external hard drive ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136022 ) and am wondering if it is okay to lay it down on its side while I'm using it. Some people have told me that I shouldn't do this, but I have no idea.

Also, do you guys have any tips on how to preserve the life of the external hard drive?

 

[Cromewell]

As long as you don't shake it around while it's running it should be fine.

 

[apj101]

As long as you don't shake it around while it's running it should be fine.

whilst my concurrence is not required it is given

 

[StrangleHold]

I dont think it will hurt anything. I have had people bring me there computer to work on, not because of a harddrive problem and they had installed there harddrive upside down and it seem to run fine and I have worked on older Dells that had there harddrive mounted straight up and down (vertical) in the front bottom of the case. But like said above, dont shake it while its running

 

[PohTayToez]

I have worked on older Dells that had there harddrive mounted straight up and down (vertical) in the front bottom of the case. But like said above, dont shake it while its running

Me too... and old Compaqs. For a while it was how they did it in all the prebuilts to save space, and I have 10 and 20GB hard drives from those machines that STILL work, so I don't imagine it was too bad for them.

 

[bleecher]

Thanks for the responses. I just have one more question.

The western digital manual says that to turn off the drive I should click the safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray, select safely remove USB Mass Storage Drive, and when when a message is displayed that it is safe to remove the drive, press the power button to turn the drive off.

However, when I select safely remove USB Mass Storage Drive, the message is displayed and my drive automatically turns off (the lit green circle turns off and I hear the drive stop spinning) Does this mean that I don't actually have to click the power button before I disconnect the drive?

 

[Cromewell]

If it powers off then you should be fine. Even if it doesn't all you want to do is make sure that cached writes are written to the drive before powering it off which is what safely remove hardware will do.