Hi! I am a newcomer to this field, so have mercy if this is a silly question but I want to know is storing external harddrives side-by-side, or even on top of one another, in any way can compromise the stored information (this is a magnetic medium after all)? I know loudspeakers and electric radiators are forbidden zones, but hard drives which are turned off, just lying down? I have so much important, personal stuff on them, that having it erased would be a total disaster!!!

And, while I am at it, should they be turned on from time to time, to "charge them up?" I seem to recall reading SOMEWHERE that a hard drive that is just lying there, not used at all, will start do "decompose" (as these things go ) and erase stored information after a while. If so, how often, and for how long, should they be connected to the computer?

Like I said, am a newcomer, but would appreciate help..

Have a nice life and stay safe. There are nasty viruses in the outside world, too.I have had hard drives close to each other for years and no problems.

I had a old IDE hard drive from 1997 that was 4.3GB in capacity last up until 2 years ago spending 15 years in storage and it finally died because the motor that spins the platters wasnt spinning up to full speed. I had prior to that backed up all the data to a DVD-R disc though and still have all the data.

You are correct in that you dont want to have them stored near a strong magnetic source, such as I destroyed a bunch of floppy disks years ago because I decided to place them stacked on top of a desk that had a large woofer speaker under it and the field of the woofer caused data loss to them.

Any data that is critical should be backed up among multiple storage locations and if critical to where you cant live without the loss of the data it should also be up on cloud storage or saved as a backup in more than one location so that if anything happened to the data at the one location such as a fire etc you have it safe elsewhere.

I have stacks of older drives that I use for long term storage of data, data that was on them that is higher importance also is burned to DVD-R and located at more than just the home as I also use my cloud storage. I have them numbered with marker and a index notebook that says what is on each drive and so if I NEED data I can go into the dry attic and GET one of the drives and dock it to the USB IDE or USB SATA dock and spin it up and copy that data to my local system that I will use it at.I intended to post a related question and found this thread.

Quite a few years ago i got a 1TB external hard drive to store photos and it is now almost full. I will buy a new one and am wondering about getting a 4TB and copying all the existing photos to it. I will keep the original but want to minimise the risk of it failing at some time and LOSING everything on it.

Is this a reasonable action?It is a good idea to have any important data stored on more than 1 device. With things like photos which are often irreplaceable then 3 places would be ideal.
I personally would rather have a 1 or 2 TB drive than a 4 TB, especially if this is of the pocket size and USB powered.

If you are going to Larger drives you are better getting a powered desktop drive like these https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/external-drives/wd-my-book-usb-3-0-hdd#WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN

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I personally would rather have a 1 or 2 TB drive than a 4 TB, especially if this is of the pocket size and USB powered.