RDR / Evidence and expert work / Recorder drives that have stopped

Investigations & evidence · the drives inside CCTV recorders

DVR hard drive recovery in Reading. The drive has failed; what is on it usually has not.

Mains off, drive out, drive posted, box kept. A boot loop, black panels, a menu insisting there is no disk, live pictures that refuse to play back — the hard drive is behind nearly all of it, not the recorder. A surveillance disk gets written to every second it has power, and it is usually the cheapest component anybody put in that box. Leave the unit running and the loop keeps going round, spending the very footage you rang about. £400 + VAT, diagnosis free, and half of the figure up front where a drive has to be opened.

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

Talk it through in confidence
0800 6890668

What really fails inside these.

The disk inside itThe drive in a recorder writes continuously. SkyHawk from Seagate and Purple from Western Digital are the ranges made for that. Beside the cameras they cost almost nothing, and the endless writing is what finishes them.

What you see on the monitorBoot loops. Panels that stay black. A menu insisting there is no disk. Live pictures running perfectly well while playback does nothing, or stalls a few seconds into the same hour every time.

Why a PC sees nothingFew recorders use a filesystem a computer recognises, and some write to the bare device. Connect that disk to any Windows machine and it will look empty and offer to format. It is not as bad as it appears. Say no.

What does not come backFootage already written over. Encrypted files with no password file alongside them. Anything lying inside a band the drive refuses to read at all. Where that proves to be the answer, you are told early — and on most jobs there is no fee if the data does not come back.

Match the symptom to the fault.

Not here? Tell us what it is doing →

What you are seeing	What is likely wrong	What happens next
The unit restarts itself over and over	It is waiting on a drive that will not answer	Power off, immediately
The menu reports no hard disk	The disk has dropped off the bus, or the heads are done	Turn down any reformat offer and take it out
Live view works, playback does not	The video is intact; the damage is in the index that points to it	Send the drive in to us
A click, or a slow buzzing, comes out of the box	The heads have touched down. Every switch-on costs more	Keep it off the mains
On a PC it looks unformatted	No PC understands the layout a recorder lays down	Expected. Turn down the format offer
The installer has already fitted a new disk	Wherever it has ended up, the original disk is the evidence	Get it back unused, then post it

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 →

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

Bring it to a halt

Mains off, drive out, and nothing plugged into a computer. Where the disk will not answer at all, the fault gets found on the bench first — heads, motor, board, the drive's own firmware area — and reading comes after that.

Nothing more gets writtenImaged behind a write blocker

Repair only as far as needed, then copy

Repair stops at the point where imaging becomes possible, and no further. The copy is then taken read-only behind a write blocker, weak ground worked over in short passes rather than forced. Everything after that runs on the copy, so the original is only ever handled once.

Board, then motor, then headsTaken off in short passes

Then take the video off it

Where the recorder's layout came through into the image, clips come out in sequence, each labelled with its channel and the time of recording. Where it did not, the image gets combed for the byte pattern opening a compressed frame — H.264 or H.265 — and what comes back plays, without labels.

The layout read from the imageCarving where nothing is left

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

These disks are never idle — a surveillance drive writes for its entire working life, and it is normally the cheapest component in the box. The duty cycle is what finishes them.
A PC will tell you it is empty — recorders use layouts of their own, some writing to the bare device, so Windows finds nothing familiar and suggests formatting. Refuse. The footage is underneath.
Everything runs on a copy — a write blocker goes on the drive and an image is taken before a single file is opened. A failing disk gets one careful pass rather than fifty, because any pass could be its last.
Three things set the limit, in this order: the loop reached it before you did; the disk will not read in exactly the region holding your hour; or the recorder kept running for a week afterwards. None of the three is about skill, and you are told which one applies before money changes hands.

Send the drive, keep the box: recorders are heavy, they suffer in transit, and we have no use for them here. Take the disk out, note which bay it came from, and post it alone, packed so it cannot move. Multi-disk NVRs differ — the video is spread across the set, so all of them travel, in order. Ring before you pack. Return postage is ours.

How one of these actually went.

PL · RDG-2026-2019ON FILE ✓

A failed gate recorder at a haulage yard at Colthrop

Playback from the camera on the night gate had failed weeks before, and nobody followed it up. Then a load disappeared. One head on the drive was bad; the repair went only as far as imaging required, and the surface came off in short passes. Times intact, four of the eight channels returned. A band across the middle of the platter refused to read at all, and whatever sat there stayed there. Partial, and written up as partial.

4 of the 8 channels came back with their times72bench hours

What helps, and what makes it worse.

First things to do

Get it off the mains, now
Write down make, model and the date you need
Post the drive and hang on to the recorder
Tell us who owns it and who can authorise the work

What makes it worse

Leaving it running in the hope it settles
Accepting a reformat to get the box booting
Putting the disk in a PC for a quick look
Allowing a replacement in while the original disappears off site

What people ask before they send it.

The recorder says there is no hard disk. Has the video gone?

Not on the strength of that message, no. It tells you the recorder has lost contact with its disk, nothing more — the footage is still down on the platters. Pull the mains lead first, though: every extra hour a failing disk spends writing costs you something.

Windows asked to format the drive. Have I wrecked it?

No — but say no to it. Recorders use layouts of their own that Windows cannot interpret, so a drive full of video shows up empty on a PC. Decline, unplug it, and let us know if a format has been run already, since that changes where we look.

Do you want the recorder as well, or just the drive?

The drive alone. Recorders are heavy, they get knocked about in transit, and there is nothing here we need one for. Multi-disk NVRs are the one exception, because the video is spread across the set — ring us before you pack and we will tell you what to send.

Can the installer fit a replacement disk?

Only where the original leaves the recorder for good. Put it back into any unit and it starts being written over again. Ask for it unpowered, in an anti-static bag, and keep it somewhere safe until you have decided whether you want what is on it.

If this sounds like yours, start here.

Video the recorder kept → Clips for insurers and police → Deleted files, and what is left → 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.

0800 6890668

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