External HDD - standing or lying down

[uno]

I have preferred to buy external HDD's standing up because I thought it would not be so hot in a vertical position as there is more air around it.
Now I have had such a vertical HDD lying down in my bank's safe as a backup. When I would use it after a year it did not work.
The PC cannot find it at all. I also tried with my mini pc. It can find it some times. I could see that it had gone into "RAW" but it was not possible to format the HDD with the mini pc.
Can this "RAW"-thing has happened because the HDD was lying down for a long time?

[lordsmurf]

Flat vs no -- It really depends on the model.
Cause for failure? No, not in storage. Just coincidence.

What brand drive was it?

[fritzi93]

It might be the enclosure has gone bad. I had an external that behaved somewhat like yours, it wouldn't get recognized occasionally. I re-seated all connections and that seemed to work for awhile. Eventually though it stopped getting recognized entirely. I took out the hard drive and put it in my HTPC and the hard drive itself was/is A-OK.

[nic2k4]

More than likely it had a problem with some solder joints from the start and got worse over time. The data on the drive should still be intact, just open the casing, remove the drive and get a new external case. It's possible the drive itself has a problem, if you install it in a PC you would be able to tell before getting a new enclosure.

[TBoneit]

Hard drives are designed to work upright or laying flat. Modern day solder is more brittle than the older 60/40 solder.

One possible cause is that one or more pins connecting the USB port to the board in the enclosure has come loose. I've fixed more than one flash drive for that, for myself and customers.