GoKawiilGuide details proper long-term storage practices for old hard drives
A storage guide outlines how heat, humidity, and magnetic fields can damage hard drives over time, and notes that even undisturbed drives can fail due to seized mechanical parts or degraded capacitors. It recommends backing up all important data before archiving a drive, verifying the transfer, and following the 3-2-1 backup rule: three copies of data on two different mediums with one stored offsite.