Hi all,
my old Samsung ST1000lm025 USB 100760718 external HDD stopped working many years ago. Now I'd like to recover the data.
The symptoms are that when I connect it to the PC, the blue LED starts flashing, the drive is recognized for a few seconds, then stops flashing and is no longer recognized. If I touch it, I can feel the motor spinning. The heads are in the parking area, not on the platter (I opened it for a few seconds).

After this action the hard drive became much worse than it was before. Now decide if the data on the drive is worth the price a data recovery lab will charge. You probably can't do anything on your own.

You could, of course, try connecting the hard drive directly to the computer via a SATA cable and see if the hard drive is at least recognized in the BIOS. If you're REALLY lucky, you might be able to copy it, but you'll have to buy a new drive to copy the data onto.

The Samsung Spinpoint ST1000LM025 is USB 3.0 on the interface which means it needs the USB cable to work. The disk is 1TB 2.5" class disks typically seen in an enclosure but disks today are plentiful but do not come with the enclosure anymore.

Samsung sold their disk division to Seagate long ago and now they make NAND and RAM.

Opening the disk assembly outside of a clean room is sure to contaminate the platters and now the disk is likely unrecoverable as it is almost impossible to clean the platters once contaminated. Head failures are the most common fault.

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USB 3.5" enclosures are $19 USD postage paid from China, I own several

Dmitry, please do something ...
:cat:

btw, cleaning platters is not impossible, actually a daily routine, so the case is not unrecoverable based on just that. But likely needs an expert to succeed.
pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Okay, but what's the problem with a hdd with this specific behavior? The heads are in the parking area, the motor is spinning. Sorry, but I'm not interested in the problems associated with opening the hdd outside of a clean room.

Just because the heads are on the ramp it doesn't mean they can still read from the platters. Sticktion (the heads on the platters which, after probably watching a youtube video is why you opened it) make up for a very small percentage of failed heads.

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Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

it requires proper diag, anything one says in this stage is just guessing.
we would be one step further with a terminal log...

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

I was wondering, if I isolate the head connectors with tape and notice the same behavior, maybe that's the problem?

We need to see the terminal log.

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31037

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29637

How to connect a terminal adaptor on a Samsung drive ?

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?p=432#p432

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A backup a day keeps DR away.