The short answer: We do not have a branch in Ostrava, and we will not pretend otherwise—our laboratory is in Brno-Židenice, and we serve the Moravian-Silesian Region remotely: submit an enquiry, receive a shipping label by email, and send the disk free of charge through Zásilkovna. Diagnostics for HDDs, SSDs, RAID arrays, and NAS devices are free. You receive a fixed price before any recovery work begins, and if we cannot recover your data, you pay nothing apart from shipping. The only exception is a targeted search for one specifically named file, charged at a pre-agreed flat fee of CZK 1,000. Our laboratory is roughly 170 kilometres and just under two hours from Ostrava via the D1—less than half the journey to Prague.
Ostrava has plenty of repair shops. The question is who will actually open the disk
In the country’s third-largest city, you can find several computer repair shops within fifteen minutes of your office, and most of them will do a good job: replace a faulty USB adapter, read a disk that still spins normally, or reinstall Windows. Data recovery, however, has one hard dividing line—the moment the storage medium must be physically opened. Beyond that point, a screwdriver and a recovery software licence are no longer enough. You need a clean environment, donor parts for the specific drive family, and a hardware imager capable of reading a damaged surface in small sections without stopping at the first error.
There are far fewer facilities with a clean chamber than online listings might suggest. You can identify them by asking two questions: where exactly is the chamber located, and who exactly will replace your drive’s heads? If the answer is „we send it to a partner," there is nothing inherently wrong with that—just be aware that the disk will be sent elsewhere anyway, you will not know where, and the price will include a middleman’s margin.
So, to be completely transparent: our laboratory is in Brno-Židenice. We do not have one in Ostrava, Havířov, or Frýdek-Místek, and your disk will need to travel to us. This article explains what that journey involves and what can go wrong before it even begins.
The first ten minutes matter more than which company you choose
Most data is lost between the moment someone notices a problem and the moment they pick up the phone. Not through negligence, but through well-intentioned attempts to help.
- Switch it off and leave it off. With a mechanically damaged disk, every additional start spins up the motor again and gives the heads another opportunity to scrape the platter surface. Once the magnetic surface has been scraped away, nobody can read it—the data is simply no longer there.
- Do not try four companies in succession. Faulty mechanics do not allow unlimited attempts, and „free diagnostics" still means another read of the same damaged surface. Choose one facility and let it complete the process.
- Do not write anything else to the source disk. Do not install recovery software on it or save recovered files to it. Recovery should be performed from an image—a sector-by-sector copy—with the results stored elsewhere.
- Do not start a rebuild on a disk array until the data exists somewhere else. I explain why below—it is the costliest mistake covered in this article.
- Write down what happened and what you have already tried. Include unsuccessful attempts and whether anyone has already opened the disk. An undisclosed attempt costs us time and can sometimes cost you your data.
What you can still try, depending on the symptoms
| What is happening | What it usually means | What to do now |
|---|---|---|
| The disk clicks, squeals, or repeatedly spins up | the heads cannot find the servo position; on older drives, the spindle bearing may also have seized | Disconnect the power and do not try again. With this type of failure, every power-on measurably reduces the chance of recovery |
| Windows offers to format the disk (RAW) | the file system table is damaged, but the data is often still intact | Do not click it. Above all, do not run CHKDSK on the original disk—it writes to file system structures |
| The disk disappeared after a storm or power surge | the protection TVS diode on the PCB may be shorted, or the motor controller may have burnt out | Do not reconnect it, and do not swap in a PCB from another drive: the board’s memory contains adaptive data tied to this specific disk |
| An external 2.5-inch disk was dropped and has not spun since | displaced or stuck heads, and sometimes surface damage—although the cause could also be the cable, power supply, USB connector, or electronics | Do not switch it on „one more time to see whether it starts." Only diagnostics can determine whether the medium needs to be opened |
| The array reports degraded, volume crashed, or read-only | one array member has failed, but the data on the remaining disks is often still intact | Before replacing any disk, verify the backup and the condition of every other member. If you do not have a verified backup, other disks are also reporting errors, or the array layout is unclear, leave it switched off and do not start a rebuild |
If you are not comfortable taking any of these steps—or the disk is behaving worse than it did yesterday—leave it to us: our data recovery service begins with free diagnostics and a fixed price quoted before any work starts, so you can still decline without pressure.
Send the entire external drive, not a bare disk removed from its enclosure
One fact surprises people every time: in portable WD My Passport drives, the USB controller is soldered directly to the drive’s PCB, and the hardware encryption is tied to it. Moving the platters into another enclosure or connecting the drive through SATA is not enough—without the original electronics, the data remains encrypted. Similarly, in desktop models, the key is often stored on a separate adapter board inside the enclosure. That is why you should send the complete device, including its original cable and power adapter. By contrast, many Seagate Expansion and Backup Plus models contain an ordinary SATA disk with a removable bridge. If only the bridge has failed, the data remains intact, making this the least expensive scenario of all.
Business NAS and servers: where things most often go wrong
Businesses tend to send us storage systems rather than laptops—production documentation, CAD files, accounting records, and surveillance footage. A NAS has one characteristic that encourages rash decisions: it looks like an appliance, but inside it is a fully fledged Linux computer.
Both Synology and QNAP build volumes on top of software-based md-RAID, often with an additional LVM layer, followed by ext4 or btrfs. The good news is that the data is therefore not locked inside the enclosure and can often be read outside it. The bad news is that every one of these layers can be damaged independently by an unqualified attempt to „reassemble the array." With thin provisioning, the block mapping must also be reconstructed. For specific guidance when DSM reports a crashed volume, see Synology: storage pool degraded and volume crashed.
The costliest mistake is starting a rebuild before a copy exists. Rebuilding an array reads every remaining disk from beginning to end—with an array of four high-capacity disks, that means hours or even days under full load. If the disks came from the same shipment, as they almost always do, they have the same operating hours and often belong to the same production batch. A rebuild is therefore precisely the moment when the second disk is most likely to fail.
One final point about NAS systems: a snapshot stored on the same device is not a backup. Waves of ransomware targeting internet-facing NAS devices have shown that attackers with administrator access can also remove or compromise snapshots. A backup is a copy stored elsewhere that cannot be overwritten from the compromised machine.
A replacement disk can no longer be taken for granted
This is a development from recent months that most small businesses have not yet noticed. Data-centre demand for high-capacity disks has consumed manufacturers’ production capacity well into the future: lead times for nearline models have grown longer and prices have risen. For an array in a small business, this has three practical consequences:
- Buy a cold spare before you need it. The plan to „buy the same model that afternoon if one fails" no longer works—and running a degraded array for a week while waiting for a replacement is a gamble.
- Do not buy every disk for the array at once from a single source. Splitting the purchase helps ensure different production batches and reduces the risk of simultaneous failures.
- Plan for the destination medium. Recovered data needs somewhere to go: an empty disk at least as large as the damaged one, and preferably larger. If you do not have one, sourcing it will extend the job.
What to obtain in writing
The protection of personal and confidential data does not depend on whether the source is a home laptop or a company disk—it depends on your role and what happens to the data. For business media, it is often also necessary to define the processing of personal data, confidentiality, security, and deletion of working copies by contract. The disk contains information about employees and customers, and once you hand it to a laboratory, that laboratory becomes a personal data processor. Before the medium leaves your premises, obtain four things in writing:
- a data processing agreement under Article 28 of the GDPR, not merely a verbal assurance of confidentiality;
- what will happen to the working copy of your data and exactly when it will be deleted;
- a fixed price before recovery work begins, with a clear explanation of what you pay if the data cannot be recovered;
- who will physically open the medium and where—the provider itself or its partner.
If your company falls under the zákon o kybernetické bezpečnosti, this is not merely a formality but a matter of demonstrable compliance: the regulator will ask for evidence of your measures, and a supplier handling your data forms part of them. NIS2 a zákon 264/2025 Sb. explains who is affected.
How a disk gets from Ostrava to Brno
- Free collection through Zásilkovna. Complete the enquiry form, select collection, and you will receive a shipping label by email. Attach it to the parcel and drop it off at any branch. Shipping adds approximately one working day in each direction.
- Your own parcel service or courier. This makes sense for a complete NAS, multiple array members, or when you want to oversee the transport yourself.
- Bring it to the laboratory in person. The journey is roughly 170 kilometres via the D1 and takes just under two hours: Viniční 3587/216, Brno-Židenice, Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 16:00 by prior telephone arrangement. Data recovery in Brno explains when the journey is worthwhile and when it is unnecessary. Data recovery for Olomouc discusses similar considerations for a closer city.
- An on-site visit. This costs CZK 800 plus CZK 10 per kilometre, so for Ostrava the total runs into several thousand crowns; we quote the amount in advance. It only makes sense when the machine must not or cannot be transported—for example, a running rack server, an array that you want us to shut down safely first, or data that must not leave the building.
Packing has three rules: use an antistatic bag, at least five centimetres of soft cushioning on every side, and a sturdy cardboard box—never a padded envelope. Bear in mind that you cannot insure the data itself. Zásilkovna allows additional parcel insurance up to CZK 10,000; without it, compensation is calculated in the hundreds of crowns. With any carrier, however, compensation covers the hardware’s value, never the value of the data. Terms also change, so check them before sending the parcel.
How much it costs and what you pay if recovery fails
Diagnostics are free and non-binding. Once completed, we know what happened to the medium, and you receive a fixed price before recovery work begins, not after the data has already been recovered. If the recovery is unsuccessful, you pay nothing apart from shipping. The only exception is a targeted search for one specifically named file: this carries a pre-agreed flat fee of CZK 1,000, even if the file is not found.
The price is determined by the type of work, not the disk’s capacity. Logical recovery from a healthy medium, replacement of electronics, work in a clean chamber, and reconstruction of an array from multiple members are four entirely different levels of work—the difference between the lowest and highest can amount to tens of thousands of crowns. That is precisely why we quote the price only after diagnostics and why we provide it before starting the recovery.
One final request, because we see this repeatedly: if the disk is clicking, does not spin, or the array reports a failure, do not try it one more time. Call 775 556 063 with the machine switched off—data recovery is available 24/7. That one attempt you resist making can mean the difference between a recovery costing a few thousand crowns and data that nobody will ever be able to read.