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Author Topic: Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side  (Read 134 times)

sniceguy

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« on: June 05, 2005, 11:29:00 PM »
Hey,
       I was wondering if standing the XBOX 360 on its side is good for the machine in the long term. I know it was designed to stand on its side, but I dont think its good for the dvd-rom drive years down the line. I heard of Playstation 2s that went bad because of that. When I get my XBOX 360, I intend to lay it down flat like the current generation XBOX. The only thing is, I barely have room left to place it. As much as I would like to stand it on its side, I worry about how it will affect the dvd-rom inthe long run. Are there any experts out there that know something about this subject? If so, I would like to hear what you guys think of standing it on its side.

                                                                                                           Snice
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giftic

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2005, 01:10:00 AM »
smile.gif Xbox 360 is'nt built like Ps2
it will be held in place solid enuff and the it wasnt that standing on the side killed
ps2 dvd's..it was because they had crappy dvds
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Ozy

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2005, 08:11:00 AM »
QUOTE(sniceguy @ Jun 6 2005, 06:04 AM)
Hey,
       I was wondering if standing the XBOX 360 on its side is good for the machine in the long term. I know it was designed to stand on its side, but I dont think its good for the dvd-rom drive years down the line. I heard of Playstation 2s that went bad because of that. When I get my XBOX 360, I intend to lay it down flat like the current generation XBOX. The only thing is, I barely have room left to place it. As much as I would like to stand it on its side, I worry about how it will affect the dvd-rom inthe long run. Are there any experts out there that know something about this subject? If so, I would like to hear what you guys think of standing it on its side.

                                                                                                           Snice
*



This has also troubled me....
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xxbeanxx

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2005, 10:32:00 AM »
AFAIK, using my limited knowledge of physics...putting a DVD/CD/Hard Drive on its side will not hurt it.  Think of the spinning disks as gyroscopes.

Gyroscopes are stable as long as their axis are not tilted while the gyro is in motion (ie: spinning).  If you've ever used a gyro you will notice that while holding the gyro still there is no force on the axis except for the outward force generated perpendicular to the axis by the spinning disk.  However, once you try to tilt the gyroscope you can feel the force that the spin is causing.

Likewise, a DVD/CD/Hard Drive should be okay no matter how it is situated, as long as you do not move the unit while the disk (or disc, however you like to spell it) is spinning.  You'll notice that the XBOX manual instructs you not to move the XBOX once it has been powered on...I assume that it is for this reason.

To strengthen my claim....we have servers at work that have both their hard drives and CDROMS mounted vertically that have been running for years without problems.  If it were indeed true that mounting these devices vertically was bad then we should have a higher failure rate in these devices.

If anyone can confirm or disprove my theory then I encourage them to do so.
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Ozy

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2005, 10:39:00 AM »
QUOTE(xxbeanxx @ Jun 6 2005, 05:07 PM)
AFAIK, using my limited knowledge of physics...putting a DVD/CD/Hard Drive on its side will not hurt it.  Think of the spinning disks as gyroscopes.

Gyroscopes are stable as long as their axis are not tilted while the gyro is in motion (ie: spinning).  If you've ever used a gyro you will notice that while holding the gyro still there is no force on the axis except for the outward force generated perpendicular to the axis by the spinning disk.  However, once you try to tilt the gyroscope you can feel the force that the spin is causing.

Likewise, a DVD/CD/Hard Drive should be okay no matter how it is situated, as long as you do not move the unit while the disk (or disc, however you like to spell it) is spinning. 
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A DVD drive is not a gyroscope it has delicate moving parts other than the disc and is probably going to be cheap with it been mate by M$.

The DVD drive shouldn't get damaged but I fear for the disc myself, been sat in the tray then put in spining then spinning down while scraping against the tray once the power to the DVD drive is off.

M$ has opened a whole new wave of faults if they don't design it right.

But let's see what happens...
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twistedsymphony

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #5 on: June 06, 2005, 12:21:00 PM »
Most of not all PC DVD drives are designed for use both vertically as well as horizontally. Open you PC drive and you'll see little bumps along the edge of the CD outline that hold the disc in place when mounted vertically. (heck they even left these in on the Xbox Samsung Drives) From the innard shots we've seen in the videos the 360 uses a stand alone DVD drive similar to the Xbox 1. So more likely than not it's just a Samsung (or whatever) drive that has already been designed to function on it's side before they even thought of putting it in a console.

The disc wont scrape anymore on it's side than it will flat. the lower spindle comes up under the disc and moves it away from the tray a good distance. In fact in most cases the disc ends up spinning closer to the lid than it does the tray. Ask someone with a DVD window how far from the tray the discs spin in their Xbox.

The disc will have already stopped spinning before it touches the tray again. If there are any problems you can expect that they'll most likely be just as bad horizontally as they are vertically.

I should note that drives should be used either vertically or horizontally and NOT on an angle. The reason being is the bearings wear funny when the drive is used at an angle where if it's used directly vertically or horizontally they'll load evenly without problem.
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jack_mehoff

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #6 on: June 06, 2005, 02:31:00 PM »
If I'm able to mod the 360 like I did my original Xbox, then I plan on using the drive very minimally.  Only time I'd use it is to download one of my discs to the hard drive by using DVD2Xbox360 :-).  

I hope that some genious figures a way to hook up a fat 3.5 HDD, slap it into an external case and plug it into the USB or into where the 2.5 original drive plugs into.  Now that would be delicious!

Jack Mehoff (please)
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Ozy

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #7 on: June 06, 2005, 02:41:00 PM »
QUOTE(jack_mehoff @ Jun 6 2005, 09:06 PM)


I hope that some genious figures a way to hook up a fat 3.5 HDD, slap it into an external case and plug it into the USB or into where the 2.5 original drive plugs into.  Now that would be delicious!

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you can do that anyway. The 360 supports USB mass storage devices. It's a matter of getting a normal 3.5" HD, slapping it in a metal caddy that supports USB 2.0, formating it for fat 32 and adding some software and there you go.

200GB HD upgrade on release day, I'm sure it as simple as that.
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CattyKid

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #8 on: June 06, 2005, 03:54:00 PM »
QUOTE(xxbeanxx @ Jun 6 2005, 01:07 PM)
AFAIK, using my limited knowledge of physics...putting a DVD/CD/Hard Drive on its side will not hurt it.  Think of the spinning disks as gyroscopes.

Gyroscopes are stable as long as their axis are not tilted while the gyro is in motion (ie: spinning).  If you've ever used a gyro you will notice that while holding the gyro still there is no force on the axis except for the outward force generated perpendicular to the axis by the spinning disk.  However, once you try to tilt the gyroscope you can feel the force that the spin is causing.

Likewise, a DVD/CD/Hard Drive should be okay no matter how it is situated, as long as you do not move the unit while the disk (or disc, however you like to spell it) is spinning.  You'll notice that the XBOX manual instructs you not to move the XBOX once it has been powered on...I assume that it is for this reason.

To strengthen my claim....we have servers at work that have both their hard drives and CDROMS mounted vertically that have been running for years without problems.  If it were indeed true that mounting these devices vertically was bad then we should have a higher failure rate in these devices.

If anyone can confirm or disprove my theory then I encourage them to do so.
*



Damn, that's deep...
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Owtlaw333

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #9 on: June 06, 2005, 05:21:00 PM »
My PS2 actually wouldn't work unless I had it verticle.  But I doubt putting the 360 verticle will hurt it.
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Carlo210

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #10 on: June 06, 2005, 07:01:00 PM »
Yeah putting the 360 vertical should be fine.
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CattyKid

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #11 on: June 06, 2005, 08:23:00 PM »
If it's built like my XBox, it will be fine.  I've dropped mine before and it still works.  I love my "little" black and green box, bristling with blue CCFL'S!
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MartialXboxArtist

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #12 on: June 08, 2005, 02:00:00 AM »
It's always better to lay the Xbox flat.
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Andy51

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Standing The Xbox 360 On Its Side
« Reply #13 on: June 08, 2005, 06:34:00 AM »
I have a T.V stand that is perfect for storing an xbox 360 when its on its side, not vertical, and some room for aleast 30 games, although i don't plan to keep that much. Just keep rotating with the games, you know trade in games that your bored with for new hot games.

This post has been edited by Andy51: Jun 8 2005, 01:35 PM
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