Investigations & evidence · recorder drives that have failed
In virtually all cases where a DVR boots into a loop, displays a grid of dark panels, shows "no disk", or shows live video but cannot play back recorded video, the issue is with the internal hard drive and not with the DVR. For every second a DVR has power, the disk is being written to. As far as cost is concerned, in most installations nothing else in the system costs less than a surveillance disk. Take the mains supply off the DVR. The loop is still turning, and what it is consuming is the video you were trying to get.
A quiet word first?
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| What turns up | What that points to | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| 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 either left the bus or the heads are unresponsive | Turn down any reformat offer and remove it |
| Live view works; playback does not | Pictures are still there, but the problem lies with the index pointing to the picture | Post the drive to us |
| Clicking or a slow buzz comes from the enclosure | Heads are touching the surface. Each switch-on costs more | Leave it switched off |
| A PC reports the disk as unformatted | Layout written by a recorder does not mean anything to a computer | Ordinary. Decline the format prompt |
| The installer has already put a new disk in | Whoever has it now, the old drive is the proof | Recover it unused, then post it |
Whatever is delivered is booked in using a unique reference (case number) on the date it arrives at the bench. The engineer will identify the actual fault at no charge. This gives a straightforward answer on what can be recovered from the drive and what cannot, plus one written quotation. There will be no further activity until you have read and accepted the quotation.
Mains power turned off, disk removed, and no connections to computers. If a drive will not respond, the fault is found at the workbench first (head, motor, board, firmware), then it can be read.
The repair to the drive goes just as far as needed and no further. Following this, the drive is duplicated read-only behind a write blocker. Weak areas are read in short passes, rather than constantly attempting to push them beyond what they can handle. Everything after that runs from the duplicate, so the original is touched once and then left alone.
If the recorder's own layout has come through into the image, all the clips will appear in chronological order, along with the channel and the time that each clip was recorded. However, if it has not, the image will be scanned for the pattern that begins every compressed frame, whether the compression used is H.264 or H.265. The frames found will come back without labels.
Give yourself time to consider it. It costs you nothing. We list all of the files we recover for you before sending out an invoice, and we only ask for payment once you have authorised it. We also buy media specifically for your recovery and send it back to you, with the return postage paid by us. The case stays here on our bench until we have your confirmation that the files open properly on your own machine.
Post the drive and keep the box: a recorder is generally quite heavy and tends to get knocked about in the post, and it's no use to us here anyway. Get a quote first. Then remove the disk from the recorder, note which caddy the disk came from, and send just the disk, packed so it can't move around. Multi-disk NVRs are different. Each disk holds part of the video, so all of them must travel together, in order; contact us first and we'll tell you what's needed before you post anything.
The playback on the night gate camera had been broken for weeks and nobody had dealt with it. Then a load went missing. One of the heads on the drive was faulty, so it was fixed just enough for imaging, and the drive was then read in short passes. Times came back attached to four of the eight channels. But a band through the middle couldn't be read at all, and whatever was in that band stayed there.
Not on its own, no. This message just means the recorder can't access the disk. Your video is still intact on the platters. Switch the unit off at the mains before doing anything else, because a struggling disk gets worse with every extra hour it is made to write.
No, but decline the offer. A Windows-based PC cannot read the layout used by a CCTV recorder, so even a full disk will look as if there's nothing stored on it when viewed on a PC. Don't accept the offer to format the disk; remove the disk from the system and tell us whether or not it has already been formatted. That information matters a lot for what we look for.
Just the hard drive itself. The recorder is quite heavy, gets knocked about in the post, and is of no use to us. However, multi-disk NVRs are different because they share out the video across multiple drives: call us first and we'll advise on what you need to send.
Only if the original drive comes out and does not go back in. Insert it into another recorder and writing will start over it again. Ask for the drive unused, preferably in an anti-static bag, and store it safely until you decide whether you want what is stored on it.
Every single minute the recorder continues to record, the clip you want becomes more and more likely to be recorded over for good and your deadline does not change. Begin here. Your first look is free of charge and any information we receive from you is held in confidence.