Have I inadvertently fitted a SSD in a damaging way?

[iqoniq]

My mum came up last night, and brought her tower with her for me to fit another SSD. I did wonder why my dad didn't do it, and then I remembered the hassle it was tidying the cables up at the back of the chassis (she has a tempered glass side panel to show off the UV and LEDs). I then discovered that to fit the drive I'd have to rearrange the cabling and repack it, and due to wanting to spend some time with my mum I hit a temporary solution of mounting the SSD "sideways" using two screws in the side of the SSD to mount it (pointing upwards) until I get chance to take it apart when I'm next at my parents.

Anyway, my brother has seen it and told my mum it's dangerous, and if she uses the SSD it will damage it. The machine only has fans as moving parts. There's no mechanical HDDs, and vibration is at an absolute minimum. The machine hardly gets moved, so it's unlikely to get stressed like it would if it was being moved all the time. The alignment of drive also puts it side on to fans at the front so it's also being cooled pretty well. As I've said it's a temporary fix and when I next go down for a few days I'll mount it properly, so is it really doing damage? Just for the record he didn't attempt to rectify it, as he also knows how much hassle it was to pack the cables away.

So is he right, or is he just on a wind-up with my mum?

 

[Johnmcl7]

Your brother is wrong and I can't even think how an SSD could be damaged by mounting it incorrectly unless it was something really ridiculous. It's a circuit board in a case so there's no moving parts, it doesn't produce much heat and it's light so it doesn't take much to secure it. I've mounted some SSDs in previous desktop cases with just a couple of screws where there isn't a proper bay for them and I didn't have an adapter making sure they're secure and they've worked fine.

Hard drives are a different story and require more caution but you're not fitting a had drive.

 

[iqoniq]

Your brother is wrong and I can't even think how an SSD could be damaged by mounting it incorrectly unless it was something really ridiculous. It's a circuit board in a case so there's no moving parts, it doesn't produce much heat and it's light so it doesn't take much to secure it. I've mounted some SSDs in previous desktop cases with just a couple of screws where there isn't a proper bay for them and I didn't have an adapter making sure they're secure and they've worked fine.

Hard drives are a different story and require more caution but you're not fitting a had drive.

Thanks for reassuring me. I've fitted loads of SSDs (and HDDs), and one of my servers has the SSDs mounted in a similar way purely because I had more drives than bays, although if I bust that it's my stuff I'm wrecking. I had an idea my brother was on a wind up because he hadn't contacted me first to check the method in the madness.

 

[John7]

HAHA! I've had an SSD fitted in a PC for years, just 'secured' with a couple of blobs of Black Tac (industrial strength Blu Tac)! It's been fine.......

As above, there's no moving parts and very little heat, so you can mount 'em any way you like.

 

[iqoniq]

HAHA! I've had an SSD fitted in a PC for years, just 'secured' with a couple of blobs of Black Tac (industrial strength Blu Tac)! It's been fine.......

As above, there's no moving parts and very little heat, so you can mount 'em any way you like.

Thanks for giving me something to wind him up with