Thread: Best Way to mount a 3.5" HDD

No need for foam. Bolt it directly the to the frame and mount it horizontal. Or vertical. Whichever way fits your install best. HD's are cheap and usually last a couple years in the car. By the time you have to replace it, you'll probably be upgrading to solid state.

Don't believe anything anyone else purports to say about hard drive mounting orientation or stability unless they provide documented evidence of scientific testing on this subject. Everything else, including my advice, is based on anecdotal, statistically insignificant sample sizes.

Originally Posted by rybitski

I have a 3.5" SATA HDD and I was wondering what orientation would be best for mounting it. I.E. vertical, horizontal, etc. I was reading another thread that mentioned this and they seemed to be dead locked either way. So those of you running 3.5" drives how is yours mounted? Are you using any sort of shock absorbers?

Right now I am planning on mounting the hard drive separate from the computer. In my car there is a foam insert that fits into the center of the spare, I am thinking about mounting it there. (I drive a 2007 Chevy aveo sedan)
Ideas Welcome.

Bugbyte has some great advice. But where I differ is the relationship of the drive platters and read/write head. Horizontal mounting tends to allow the head to hit the platters easier in a bouncy, shock-ridden environment. Many have never had trouble though, so do what you think is best. I think cold climates are worse then the shock the drive might encounter. If you plan to stiffen the suspension, then go with some sort of shock-preventing measures. Otherwise just follow Bugbyte's advice!

EDIT: the sata cable is more important to secure.... they tend to wiggle loose easily. Get one with retainer clips.

Originally Posted by nobb

I did some informal testing today with an old 2.5 drive in a usb enclosure because I was curious.

I believe that when you mount your drive vertically, you may prevent the heads from slapping into the platters, but may also lower the performance of the drive due to the increased read/write errors during shock (as the head bounces around missing its intended tracks, and ECC has to cover for it). Just by shaking the drive up and down, I was able to get read/write speeds up to 50% lower than what they were when the tests were done with the drive stationary. Shaking the drive more violently made the speeds even lower.

Try it yourself, there is a free drive speed tester called CrystalDiskMark.

There is the caveat! But then, how often is your drive going to encounter shock while reading/writing? And wouldn't that tradeoff be better than a dead drive?

Or you can mount horizontally, with foam or shock preventing mounts.

Originally Posted by rybitski

Way ahead of you one should be arriving today.
For the past month I have had the pc in my car temporarily just sitting in a case in the trunk. The hard drive was mounted horizontally. The only time I had trouble with the drive skipping is when going around a sharp turn and the pc slid from one side to the other. So I think I am going to mount it on shocks horizontally.

You'd be better off securing the entire PC so it doesn't slide around when cornering.

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

No need for foam. Bolt it directly the to the frame and mount it horizontal. Or vertical. Whichever way fits your install best. HD's are cheap and usually last a couple years in the car. By the time you have to replace it, you'll probably be upgrading to solid state.

Don't believe anything anyone else purports to say about hard drive mounting orientation or stability unless they provide documented evidence of scientific testing on this subject. Everything else, including my advice, is based on anecdotal, statistically insignificant sample sizes.

Mr Bug is correct. My personal experiance matches this except for the failure rate. My personal observations lead me to think the failure of HDs is rare ore very rare in cars.

Do not use foam.

I mounted my HDD on little rubber pump mounts, to absorb the vibrations... damn it looked cool! (photos in my build link in sig).

now it's just bolted into the case vertically so the platters are on the same plane as the cars wheels. the cars gets driven hard on very rough dirt roads regularly. has made no difference whatsoever.

just hard mount it. give it some air space to stay cool, thats about it really.