IME, the main reason a disk doesn't work when it comes out of storage is that it was basically knackered when it went into storage because it had been used heavily or was just junk to start with. You've probably heard the perjorative names people give to disk brands they've lost data to and don't trust any more: "Seacrate", "Necropolis", "Minstor" etc. We do not generally put lightly-used high-quality disks into archive storage, as they're expensive and we want to get our money's worth out of them.
However, you should still prioritise the data retrieval because there is also a gentle decline while in storage which will eventually push a marginal disk over the edge. Oil seeps out of drive bearings, the plastic packaging in chips eats into the silicon, and metal rusts. Entropy eventually claims its own no matter how hard you try to stop it.
You should not have any problems finding an adaptor for your disks as USB-PATA adaptors are still made and sold today and are backwards compatible to a surprising degree. I was able to read disks from the early 1990s with one such device. The only ones that wouldn't read were those that made some very sick-sounding noises indicating terminal mechanical failure.