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RDR / Evidence and expert work / Footage recovered from recorder disks

Evidence work · the disks that come out of CCTV recorders

CCTV footage recovery, Reading. Cut the power to the recorder now; everything else can wait an hour.

A recorder fills its disk, returns to the first block and lays new video over the oldest. Age is the only thing it goes by, so it cannot tell the ninety seconds you need from an empty stockroom at two in the morning. Take the power away and that stops. What follows is bench work on a copy of the disk: free to look at, £400 + VAT to do, the figure in writing before anything chargeable starts, and on most jobs no fee if nothing comes back. Most of it arrives from small sites — a trade counter on one of the Reading estates, a gate camera on a yard at Theale, a shop unit out at Calcot.

No files back, no fee — on most jobs Logged as an exhibit from the start The loop is recording over it now

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Which recorders come through the door.

Hikvision · HiLookNo other make arrives here in these numbers. Look at the head of the disk and a HIKVISION signature is sitting there, a B-tree index behind it, and between the two the clips come back with their labels intact.
DahuaSecond on this bench by volume, and laid out on a completely different plan: DHFS tables, video kept as .dav files. Anything that will still parse gets parsed; the rest gets carved.
Swann · Reolink · Annke · UniviewDozens of badges, a handful of chipsets between them. Once the disk is clear of its housing the arrangement is generally one we have met many times, and whose name is on the lid stops mattering.
Generic unbranded unitsPut in years ago by a company that has since folded, no manual, nobody left to telephone. None of that changes the work. Behind the lid there is a disk putting video into blocks, and reading blocks is what we do.

Find the recorder's symptom, then the next move.

Not here? Tell us what it is doing →
What you are seeingWhat is likely wrongWhat happens next
The clips were deleted through the menuOne line of the index went; the pictures did notCut the power today
The installer put a fresh format on the driveA format writes a blank index and leaves the rest aloneFrames are carved out of the image
No lights, no picture, no reactionThe video is on the disk, not on the board that failedPost the disk; we image it
It happened a fortnight agoThe loop may have covered it already, and that is a question with an answerThe free look settles it
Playback works, export does notA failed USB socket, or export firmware that has stopped workingThe clips come off our copy instead
A loss adjuster or a solicitor has asked for itExhibit bundle: native clips, MP4 copies, a hash for each, method noteMention it at booking
Getting it to the lab: the lab takes parcels by tracked, insured post, and the return leg is at our expense. Unsure how to pack it? Ring before the box is sealed and an engineer will tell you what to send and what to leave out. The rest of the detail sits on the packing and postage page.

What we do, in order.

How other jobs ended →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on your device the day it reaches us, and an engineer then finds the real fault — free, and before anything else happens. You are told plainly what will come back and what will not, with one fixed figure in writing beside it. Nothing chargeable starts until you have read that and said yes.

The look costs you nothingA fixed price, in writingStill nothing to pay
02

Power off, first of all

One instruction opens every footage call taken here: get the unit off the mains, or take its drive out. No other advice on this page comes close to it in value, because for as long as that box has power it is quietly replacing the very clip you rang about.

Power it down firstThe loop stops there
03

A copy that can only be read

The drive goes behind a hardware write blocker and every sector is pulled off it. Not one byte travels back the other way. From the moment that image exists the recorder stops mattering, and everything left to do happens on the copy.

Imaged behind a write blockerA dead recorder is no barrier
04

The maker's tables first, carving after

Hikvision writes a HIKBTREE index; Dahua keeps DHFS tables instead. Where enough of either survives, every clip that comes out carries its camera and the moment it was recorded. When neither will parse, the work drops a level — hunting the byte signatures that open each compressed frame under H.264 and H.265, then assembling playable files from what turns up.

Manufacturer's tables read firstFrame carving where they are gone
05

The list first, then the bill, then the files

You see the file list first, then decide. Nothing is invoiced until you have said yes, and on most jobs there is no fee at all if the data does not come back. What we pull off goes onto media bought in for your job, and the postage home is ours. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.

Nothing billed until you say yesNew media, bought for the jobPostage home is on us

What we keep finding on recorders

  • A recorder disk carries no filesystem you would recognise — each manufacturer arranges its blocks however it likes. Plug one into a PC and Windows shows you something it cannot interpret, suggests formatting it, and any consumer undelete tool reports nothing at all.
  • The blocks hold the pictures; the index holds the labels — with an intact index, each clip arrives named and timed. Without one the footage still comes back, but nothing in the file tells you which lens made it, or at what hour.
  • The recorder makes no judgement — the oldest block is simply next in line, and an empty corridor is worth exactly as much to it as the ninety seconds you need.
  • Authority matters as much as the disk does — whoever puts the job in has to be entitled to have that system examined. Name the owner at the booking stage, and where ownership is arguable, take advice first.

About retention: no general UK statute puts a minimum on how long CCTV must be kept — the one exception, a 90-day rule for slaughterhouses in England, reaches no shop, yard or home. The figure people repeat to each other was lifted from data-protection guidance, which says only that footage should not be held longer than there is a reason to hold it, and says nothing at all about hardware. What governs your own box is arithmetic: camera count, bitrate, capacity. Nobody can do that sum down a telephone line, and the answer shortens with every hour the unit stays powered.

How one of these actually went.

RG · RDG-2026-1696ON FILE ✓

A shop in Reading, and nine days before anyone asked for the footage

Nine days passed before the loss adjuster got round to asking, and the recorder had been powered throughout. We took the drive out, imaged it and read the index: the minutes in question turned out to be sitting in blocks the loop had not yet returned to. One copy went back for watching, another for the claim file. It could as easily have gone the other way, which is the argument for taking the power off on day one.

The whole break-in window was still on the disk3 days from arrival to return

What helps, and what makes it worse.

First things to do

  • Unplug the recorder from the mains
  • Write down the cameras and the times you want
  • Post the disk on its own and keep the box
  • Name the person the copy is for, and confirm you can authorise it

What makes it worse

  • Leaving it running while you think about it
  • Erasing older clips to free up space
  • Running a firmware update or a factory reset
  • Trying the failed export over and over

What people ask before they send it.

Is CCTV footage that was deleted still recoverable?

Usually. Everything hinges on one question: did anyone take the power away before the unit worked its way back round to that stretch of disk? Erasing a clip edits the catalogue and touches nothing else. The picture data stays put until something newer lands on top of it.

What if it has already written across them?

Then you have lost it. Whatever occupied those blocks has been replaced, and no older layer waits beneath — not on this bench and not on anybody else's. That is behind the one instruction we give on every call: get the power off.

The recorder itself has stopped working. Does that take the video with it?

Not often. Strip a DVR down and you have a metal case, a circuit board and a hard drive, and only the last of the three holds any video. A board past saving is an inconvenience rather than a problem. We lift the drive out, image it, and work from the image.

How much time do I have left?

Capacity, camera count and bitrate between them decide it, and no two systems answer alike. A busy forecourt writing all day gets back to its own beginning much faster than the owner would guess. Assume the clock is against you for as long as that unit has power.

If this sounds like yours, start here.

Deleted clips, and what is left → Clips for insurers and police → How much time you have → If the recorder's own disk fails → Nothing will open the disc → The disk inside the machine → Casework for court and claims →

Stop the loop before it reaches your clip.

The recorder is still writing, and each time it comes round it takes more of what you need. Pull its power now, then get it to us. The first look costs nothing, a fixed figure follows in writing, and nothing you tell us goes anywhere else.

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