On 2003.01.31 10:40, Ross Patterson wrote:
> On Friday 31 January 2003 01:18 am, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
> > You can cause a mistrack by taking a (fully backed
> > up!) running system and gently turning the tower case on its side
> > while doing a build (or anything else that writes to the disk.)
> 
> This was certainly true 10-15 years ago, when the accepted wisdom was that 
> external hard drives should either be positioned horizontally or vertically 
> and that changing their positioning was fatal.  But drive technology has 
> improved a lot since those Sun 2s and IBM PC-ATs - is this still an issue?

The Product Summary for my Hitachi (ex IBM) Deskstar 120GXP IDE Drive says:

-------------------------------------- 8< --------------------------------------
The drive will operate in all axes (six directions). Performance and error 
rate will stay within specification limits if the drive is operated in the other 
permissible orientations from which it was formatted. 

For reliable operation the drive must be mounted in the system securely enough to 
prevent damage from excessive motion or vibration during seek operation or spindle 
rotation, using appropriate screws or equivalent mounting hardware. Drive level 
vibration test and shock test are to be conducted with the drive mounted to the 
table using the bottom four screws.
-------------------------------------- 8< --------------------------------------

Regards
Chris

-- 
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Christoph Kaegi                                           kgc@zhwin.ch
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