OK to lay noisy Samsung HD on it's side?

[hatr]

Hello,

I just bought a Samsung Sata 120MB HD with a Nidec FDB motor. I powered it up and held it in my hand. Very quiet, although I could feel some vibration.

I then placed it in a SLK3700AMB case with AAM set for quiet seeks. The seeks aren't bad, but the humming and buzzing of the case are pretty loud. If I remove the drive cage, all humming and buzzing stops. If I start to replace the cage in the case, the noise returns.

I then tried removing the cage, laying some packing foam where the cage would normally go, then laying the cage on it's side on the foam. Now the noise is almost as good as holding the drive in my hand, no humming, no buzzing. Airflow should be unchanged, the way the cage is oriented.

Now for my questions. Does this seem like a normal amount of vibration for this drive? Or do I have a problem drive? Am I asking for trouble, running the drive on it's side? Do HD's need to be mounted horizontally?

If this seems OK to do, then I can simply bungee the cage to the lower mounting plate to keep it from banging into anything. Or I could put a second piece of foam on top of the cage to wedge the cage in.

Other than the problem described above, this has been the quietest PC I've built. Decoupling the fans, cutting out the fan grills and buying a Thermaright XP-90 and Nexus fans have worked wonders for creating a quiet PC.

I thank everyone in these forums for all the great advice I've gotten here.

Rich

[the_smell]

You are fine to mount hard drives either vertical or horizontally (I would avoid strange angles). I've got a couple of spinpoints mounted vertically without any problems. The mild vibration is normal, the bungie or foam options you mensioned both seem to work well in killing off that last bit of noise!