No, he had access but clearly the router admin interface wasn’t set up to allow remote access. He then needed to access the router from a browser inside the LAN, and he did have the proxmox host configured correctly to access remotely.

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?