Are there any negative affects of placing a hard drive with the platters vertically versus the nomral horizontal position found in computer cases?
That is very interesting. Why would it matter how the drive is formatted?You should place the hd vertically BEFORE you format it.
Good practice is to always format a drive in it's permanent position.
Logically that makes sense, but then again in many rack-mounted servers / SANs / blade servers the disks are vertical - so it can't be that bad for them!
I concur. I've installed and formatted disks in every position imaginable...never with any adverse effects. Even upside down! So I would say it's positioning is largely irrelevant.
-The String