Now, knowing that the read/write heads are not supposed to touch the plates, and the only thing that keeps them floating is the air flow created by the rotation of the plates (just like airplanes fly), I was surprised and relieved to see this situation, presented on the photo:

As you can see, the r/w heads are not where they are supposed to be. The very fact that the plates are not spinning and the heads have landed on the plates is a clear sign that this HD will definitely die very soon. As I read online, the sensitivity of the heads and plates, a potential physical contact on a microstructural level would do damage that is equivalent if you take a 12 story building and drag it along an asphalt road. It will destroy both the road and the building. So, that meant that I have a somewhat destroyed r/w heads, micro chips that have teared off the heads and plates... and the worst of enemies - dust particles. My bedroom is no "clean room" so there is definitely more than 100 dust particles on a cubic meter. There are millions, and not so small particles either. Anyways, as things are, the disk is ready for burial. So another scratch or two wont do any crutial difference. So, I slided the heads off the plates onto their resting place. The next photo is to illustrate where the heads should be (this is actually a different HD, but you get the idea of where the heads should be positioned when the HD is turned off):

After sliding the heads off the plates, I closed up the HD, plugged it back on the USB tray, the computer recognized it fine, and I started copying the data. The copying lasted for about 10 minutes and then errors started appearing. They got so bad that a normal copying did not do the job any more. So I used WinHex to copy the last few documents. They were a bit damaged, but WinHex helped in editing them so the entire process finished with 100% successful retrieval of all my data. The only loss was the actual hard drive... which in the long run did not mean so much because I had the old Toshiba HD that worked... and a couple of months after this event the laptop itself died. But that is another story.
What we all should learn is that USB hard drives are very much different from memory sticks. The disks have moving parts and they have to go through a procedure for removal, so always do the "Safely remove hardware" in order that the HD may safely shut down. Next, have a good grounding of the desktop, because you may end up with a fried component because of the poor grounding. The third and most important lesson is that you must always, always, under any circumstance, have a second computer, 2.5-3.5' adapter, torx screwdrivers, good forensics software and crazy enough mind to open the HD when it refuses obedience.
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