Yeah knocking them over while active would probably not be the best, you can even hear the stress on the spindle bearings if you rotate a running hard drive. However you should be free to mount them (securely) in almost any orientation given the discussion in this old post: https://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21533&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Then why does the post say “we are looking” as if you are part of a group or team related to this?

One thing to check is whether you are receiving “Incoming” connections on other torrents (the I flag in Qbittorrent peer status). If you are, port forwarding is probably working, its just that maybe nobody in those torrents’ trackers and DHT are requesting it