vertical or horizontal mounted harddrive?

Is there any differance with having the harddisks installed vertically or horizontally? Does it get damaged more easily in vertical position?

Im asking because i am not sure in what way i should install my harddisks in my antec 182 case, there are two hd-cages, one for vertical and one for horizontal installation.

Doesn't matter how the drives are positioned. mattc is correct in that proper cooling is the main thing to look at. Which way will give better hard drive cooling.

1) This thread is over 2 years old.

2) It doesn't matter. At all. In fact, most enterprise storage setups (where reliability is absolutely critical) use vertically mounted drives.

I was surprised of the lack of comments over 2 years.
"It doesn't matter. At all." hey cjl
Thats what all the HDD reps say.
As for enterprise storage,
maybe they want to ensure their business model is sustainable.
Who do you work for cjl? WesternDigital, Seagate or the late Maxtor.

We have PLC's interfacing with PC's used in industrial sites with bad vibration, dust and extreme temperatures and horizontals last longer.

I will agree that there may be little difference for most,
but from experience its always the verticals that go bad first.
Anyone else remember the HP mini workstations that had savage vertical failure problems.

The only consistant answer is that the majority of people will outgrow their storage before they have to worry about errors.

My background is electrical and mechanical engineering but Aerospace does sound more Bling Bling.
As a student I'm sure that you were not responsible for Space Shuttle Columbia's last flight..... Maybe it was your lecturer.
The point I'm making is not everything is simply o's and 1's often its simply tiny things get missed. In the past I have not been able to find a study paper that actually compared Horizontal vs Vertical otherwise neither of us would be having this discussion.

I actually work with ex British Aerospace personnel that worked on the British Tornado. Before you ask. Yes one is old.

This thread is not exactly on track for Horiz vs Vert but is an interesting read.
http://silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21533
After reading it PLEASE feel free to post some interesting studies/links if you find some. I really would like to see some empirical data also, not just my own experience.

As for the HP Mini's I cannot remember the model(5+ years ago) but we had something like 200+ of them and you are right that heat was the major factor with them but it was definitely the vertically placed ones that were failing first and the fan were very average.

Although of minor significance but which prompted me too look further into Horizontal vs Vertical is that i have personally had a couple of vertical drives with high error rates with data read issues that i have only been able to retrieve data by placing the drives in the horizontal plane. After retrieving the data the drives have continued to work as video editing scratch pads for a year+ longer. These particular drives were Seagate and also made a humming noise just like a failing capacitor which is what alerted me to the issue in the first place as i thought i had a failing power supply which remained when it was replaced.
The noise completely disappeared when Horizontal. Originally with a 5degree tilt the noise disappeared but returned over a week period.

Anyway advice is like an opinion, take it or leave it...... or do a study and publish the empirical data.
No offense intended