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NDR / Claims, court and footage / Video read off recorder disks

Evidence work · the hard disks inside CCTV recorders

CCTV and DVR recovery, Nottingham. Take the recorder off the mains now; the rest of it keeps for an hour.

The next ten seconds at the socket are way more important than all of the other things you'll be doing today. Once the disk runs out of available space, new video will replace the oldest video. The only factor that determines which video goes first is its age. So the ninety seconds you actually need count for no more than an empty warehouse on a Sunday. Once you cut off the power, it stops. Everything else we do is done at our bench, and we use a duplicate of your original disk: there is no fee to assess it, £400 + VAT for the recovery work, a single price agreed in writing before you pay us anything, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The majority of our work comes from small sites in or near Nottingham. Examples include a trade counter on Bulwell's Blenheim Industrial Estate, a yard gate camera at Markham Vale and a retail unit on Beeston High Road.

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs Treated as an exhibit from the moment it lands Every hour, the loop writes over more of it

An engineer will talk it through with you, in confidence
0115 8220606

What actually arrives here.

Hikvision and HiLook boxesThere is nothing else coming through the bench in such volume as this. When you look at the header of the disk, you will see the HIKVISION signature, followed by a B-tree index, and between the two the clips come back labelled.
Dahua boxesSecond in total number of disks being processed on the bench, and built to a completely different design: DHFS tables, with video written directly to the disk as .dav files. The bench parses all the video that can still be parsed and carves the rest.
Swann, Reolink, Annke and UniviewThere are many different badges on hardware made using only a few different chipsets. Once the disk is pulled out of the enclosure, it is usually in an arrangement that the bench has seen many times before; therefore, at that point who put their name on the lid is irrelevant.
Grey unbranded boxesThe original installers of the system are now out of business. Unfortunately, this leaves us with little information about how the system was set up, and there is no one to contact for help. Fortunately, inside the enclosure there is a hard drive with the video on it. Video is saved as blocks, and our bench is able to read these blocks. None of that changes anything with regard to the job.

Your CCTV recorder's symptom, and the next move.

Something else? Say what it does →
What is happeningWhat usually causes itWhat that means for you
Somebody erased the clips from the menuA row was removed from the index; none of the video movedTake the supply off today
The installer formatted it to get the box runningA format only lays down an empty index; what sat underneath is left aloneCarving pulls the frames back out of the image
No lights, no picture, nothing at allThe board gave out. Video lives on the disk, never on the boardGet a quote, then post the disk
It happened a fortnight backThe loop may already have passed over it, and that can be answeredThe free look settles that
Playback runs, export will notA dead USB socket, or export firmware that has stopped workingYour clips come off our copy instead
A solicitor or loss adjuster has asked for itBundle: native clips, MP4 copies, hashes, a method noteTell us when you book it in
Getting it here: first of all you need to get a quote, either by phone (0115 8220606) or through the online form. Once you have your quote, send it to our intake lab by tracked, insured post: Manchester Data Recovery, Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5AN. Alternatively, you can drop it in there Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, without booking an appointment. Postage to return your data once recovered is paid for by us. If you are unsure what should go in the box and what should stay at home, contact us before sealing it and one of our engineers will walk you through exactly what needs to be sent and what can be left behind. All other details on packing and postage can be found in our packing and postage guide.

The order we work in.

More jobs like this one →
01

Booked in the day it arrives, and the first look is on us Free

Your case number is assigned when the item is received. Then an engineer works out what went wrong (no charge). At this point, you receive a basic summary of which parts are recoverable and which are not. You also receive a single written quote for the price of the recovery. Accept the quoted price or turn it down, and there is no obligation to pay anything.

The first look is freeOne fixed figure, in writingNo charge at this point
02

Supply off, before anything else

Each and every one of these footage calls we take follows the same procedure. First, turn off all power to the box (or remove the hard drive). Nothing else on this page will matter as much to you while you're on that telephone. Why? The recorder is writing right now over the exact piece of video you called about.

Supply off firstThat stops the loop
03

A copy nothing can write to

After the hard drive is removed from the recorder, it gets placed behind a hardware write blocker so no data can be written back to it. Next, it is duplicated, sector by sector. Once the image is created, the recorder becomes irrelevant. And then everything after this point is performed using the duplicate.

Read behind a write blockerA dead recorder is no obstacle
04

Maker's tables first, carving second

Hikvision constructs a HIKBTREE index and Dahua constructs DHFS tables. When there is enough left of either to parse, each recovered clip comes with information about which camera was used as well as when it was recorded. If neither can be parsed, then the task moves down a level. The bytes in the image are searched to locate the beginning of an H.264 or H.265 compressed frame, and each clip is rebuilt from what this search finds.

The maker's own tables firstFrame carving where they have gone
05

The file list comes before the bill

A complete file list will be provided before any invoicing. Simply say "yes" or "no" to what we found: yes means it is billed, no means it is not, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. What we find is posted to you on media purchased specifically for your case, at no additional cost to you. We consider the process complete once you have opened those files yourself on your own computer.

Nothing is charged until you agree the figureNew media, bought in for your jobWe pay to send it home

What turns up on recorder disks

  • No filesystem on there will look like anything you have seen before: each manufacturer organises its blocks in whatever way suits it. Plug one of these disks into a Windows computer and Windows has no idea what to do with what it sees, so it offers to format the whole disk; consumer undelete programs show nothing.
  • Clips live in the blocks, labels live in the index: if the index survives, every clip arrives with its time and camera. If the index is lost, the clips will still play, but the file itself will tell you nothing about which camera recorded it or when.
  • The box itself weighs nothing up: the oldest block on the disk is always the next to go. A completely empty hallway and the moment you called about are identical to it.
  • Authority also comes into play: the person who books the job must be entitled to have that system examined. Give us the owner's name at the booking stage. Where ownership of the system may be disputed, take advice before posting anything.

On retention: there is no statutory minimum in the UK for keeping CCTV footage. The figure people commonly quote was taken from data-protection guidance, and the actual wording of that guidance is that footage should not be kept once the purpose for keeping it has been met. It is a rule about reasons, not about a length of time. Each recorder is simply a sum. How many cameras are connected? At what bitrate are they recording? How big is the disk? Nobody can do that sum over the phone, and you do not need us to. The recorder already knows. Every camera has an earliest date in its playback calendar, and that date is the only honest answer anyone can give you. As long as the unit keeps running, that date gets later.

One of these, from start to finish.

NG · NTG-2026-1696ON THE LOG ✓

Nine days went by before the Nottingham shop asked for its footage

The loss adjuster waited nine days to ask, and the recorder hadn't been switched off in the meantime. The disk was taken out, imaged and its index read, and the minutes that mattered were in blocks the loop hadn't returned to. One copy was sent to be reviewed; a second went into the claim file. Nine days is a long time to leave something like this to chance, which is why we tell people to pull the plug on day one.

The entire break-in window came back off the disk3 days between arrival and return

What helps, and what does damage.

Worth doing first

  • Get the recorder off the mains
  • Note which cameras, and which times
  • Get a quote, post the disk and keep the box
  • Confirm who will receive the copy, and that you are authorised to have the work done

What makes it harder

  • Leaving it running while you think it over
  • Deleting old clips to free up space
  • Firmware updates, or a factory reset
  • Trying the failed export again and again

What gets asked before posting.

Is deleted CCTV footage still recoverable?

Generally, yes. It depends on one thing: did someone remove the power before the loop had a chance to come round to that part of the disk again? Deleting a clip only removes its entry from the catalogue. It does not move the picture itself, which stays put until new video is recorded over those same blocks.

What if it has already recorded over them?

Then it's gone. New video has been recorded over the blocks that held it, and there is no older layer underneath, not here and not at any other laboratory. That is why one instruction comes before everything else on every call: turn off the supply.

The recorder itself has stopped. Does the video stop with it?

Seldom. There are three parts inside a DVR (the case, the board and the hard disk), but video only ever goes onto the last one. So a board past repair is annoying rather than a barrier to your footage. The disk comes out, an image of it is taken, and everything after that is done on the image.

How much time have I got?

Disk size, the number of cameras and the bitrate each camera uses decide it between them, and no two systems are set up the same. A forecourt with movement in front of every lens will cycle round to its oldest hour much faster than the owner expects. Treat the clock as running while the box still has power.

Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.

Deleted clips, and what survives → Copies insurers and police accept → How long you have left → When the recorder's drive fails → The disc that will not open → The disk inside the computer → Jobs that end up in court →

Power the recorder down before the loop reaches your clip.

Remove power from the DVR before you do anything else: as long as it is powered, it keeps writing, and the oldest footage goes first. Then get a quote and post the disk in. The first look is free. CCTV and DVR work is £400 + VAT, quoted in writing before any work starts, and anything recovered from the disk goes no further than our bench.

0115 8220606

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