Investigations & evidence · recorder drives that have failed
A boot loop, a grid of black panels, no disk reported, or a live picture that refuses to play back — in nearly every case the fault is the hard drive inside, not the recorder around it. A surveillance disk is written to for every second it has power, and in most installations nothing else in the box costs so little. Pull the mains out. The loop is still turning, and what it consumes is the footage you came for.
A quiet word first?
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| What shows up | What that points to | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The unit restarts itself again and again | It sits waiting on a disk that never replies | Mains off, now |
| The menu says there is no hard disk | The drive has left the bus, or its heads have given up | Turn down any reformat offer and remove it |
| Live view works; playback does not | The pictures remain; what is damaged is the index pointing at them | Post the drive to us |
| A click, or a slow buzzing, comes from the box | Heads are touching the surface. Each switch-on costs more | Leave it switched off |
| A PC reports the disk as unformatted | The layout a recorder writes means nothing to a computer | Ordinary. Decline the format prompt |
| A new disk has already gone in from the installer | Whoever holds it now, the old drive is the evidence | Recover it unused, then post it |
Whatever arrives is booked in under a case number on the day it reaches the bench. An engineer then works out the actual fault, and that part is free. You get a plain answer on what can come off the drive and what cannot, followed by one price in writing. Nothing further happens until you have read it and agreed.
Mains off, disk out, and nothing connected to a computer. Where the drive will not respond, the fault is found at the bench first — a head, the motor, the board, the firmware — then it is read.
Repair goes exactly as far as it must and no further, after which the drive is copied read-only behind a write blocker. Weak regions come off in short passes instead of being pushed at repeatedly. Everything later runs on that copy, which means the original is touched once and then left alone.
If the recorder's own layout has come through into the image, clips arrive in order, each with its channel and the time it was made. If it has not, the image is combed for the byte pattern that opens a compressed frame, in either H.264 or H.265, and the pictures come back unlabelled.
Thinking it over costs you nothing. Everything the drive gave up is listed for you before any invoice exists, and the bill only follows your go-ahead. Files travel back on media bought in for your job, with return carriage paid at this end, and the case stays on the bench until you confirm they open on your own computer.
Post the drive and keep the box: a recorder is heavy, it takes a beating in the post, and it is no use to us here. Take the disk out, note the caddy it came from, and send that on its own, packed so that it cannot shift. Multi-disk NVRs are the exception. With the video shared out over several drives, all of them have to travel, and in order, so ring before anything is posted and we will say what is needed.
Playback from the night gate camera had failed weeks before and nobody had followed it up. Then a load went missing. One head on the drive was bad; it was repaired only as far as imaging required, then taken off in short passes. Times came back attached to four of the eight channels. A band across the middle would not read at all, and whatever sat in it stayed there.
Not by itself, no. All that message tells you is that the recorder can no longer reach the drive. Your video is still on the platters. Switch the unit off at the mains before doing anything else, because a struggling disk deteriorates for every further hour it is made to write.
No — but decline the offer. A recorder writes a layout of its own rather than one Windows understands, so a full disk still looks empty on a PC. Refuse, disconnect it, and tell us if a format has already been run: that alters what we go looking for.
Just the drive. A recorder is heavy, it takes knocks in the post, and it is of no use to us. Multi-disk NVRs are the exception, since their video is shared out across several drives — ring before you pack anything and we will say what to send.
Only if the old disk leaves the recorder and does not go back. Fit it into another unit and writing starts over it once more. Ask for it unused, in an anti-static bag, and put it somewhere safe until you know whether you want what is on it.
Every minute the recorder runs, the clip you need moves closer to being written over, and your deadline has not moved. Start it here. The first look is free, and what you tell us goes no further.