imo, mounting a drive vertically is bunk. If you need to put it vertically to fit it in your case, go ahead, but I don't think it's going to help your drive survive any longer.
I've had my hard drive mounted horizontally for a year and never had a problem.
As for suspension, I think the car's suspension + the trunk carpet liner (which has a very thin like of padding) is more than sufficient.
Having your drive's head skittered all over the platter surface because a large shock while mounted vertically isn't any better.
As for the Gs.. 50Gs is easy to come by. Dropping your drive on a stone floor from 6" can result in hundreds of Gs. Often HD damage comes from clacking two drives together during handling.
If you want your HD to last, do the one thing that's pretty much sure to help. Get a laptop HD. They're specifically designed to be tougher, to handle MUCH great shock (in the range of 4-10x, operating shock), wider temperatures and use less power. I use an IBM TravelStar drive.
__________________
Player: Celeron II 633MHz, 256MB RAM, 20GB IBM 9mm 2.5" Laptop HD (180G/2ms), onboard ethernet/sound/video/tvout, 10"11"x3" case, MPBS1 70W DC-DC PS w/auto-shutdown controller, in-dash lighted switches, 7" NTSC TFT widescreen in-dash LCD, touchscreen, rear-window brake light installed Garmin GPS35 GPS, credit card sized IR remote w/IRMan, mini-wireless keyboard/mouse (sits under seat), PowerMate black knob, MP3s and GPS Navigation (Winamp, CoPilot, SA8.0).
Car: 1993 Nissan Maxima, Black Emerald
|