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NDR / Claims, court and footage / The disk out of a recorder

Evidence work · the disk inside a CCTV recorder

DVR hard drive recovery, Nottingham. The drive is finished; what it holds usually is not.

Off at the mains. Drive out. Get a quote, then send the drive by post; the recorder stays wherever it is in Nottingham. Boot loops. Black panels. A menu claiming no disk is fitted. Live pictures with no playback behind them. Nearly all of those symptoms come from the drive, not the recorder. Every second a CCTV box has power, it writes to its disk, and that disk is generally the cheapest part anyone put in there. Each hour you leave the unit running, the loop goes round again and takes more of the footage you called about. Diagnosis costs nothing. The work is £400 + VAT, with half paid up front if a drive needs to be opened.

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 really goes wrong inside.

What kind of disk it isSurveillance drives (such as Seagate's SkyHawk range and Western Digital's Purple) are designed for constant writing; next to the cameras, they are also inexpensive. And it is the non-stop writing that eventually kills them.
What shows on the screenBoot loops. A screen that stays black. A menu insisting no disk is fitted. Live pictures are perfect while playback does nothing at all, or stops a few seconds into the same hour on every attempt.
Why a computer finds nothingFew recorders create a filesystem any computer recognises, and many write straight to the bare device. Connect that disk to a Windows computer and you see an empty-looking disk and an offer to format it. Things are better than they look. Say no.
What cannot be recoveredFootage that has already been overwritten. Encrypted files that arrive without their password file. Anything within a band the drive will not read at all. In such cases we let you know early, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.

What the symptom points to.

Something else? Say what it does →
What is happeningWhat usually causes itWhat that means for you
It reboots over and overIt is waiting for a disk that refuses to answerMains lead out, now
No hard disk, according to the menuEither the disk has dropped off the bus or its heads have failedRefuse any reformat offer and take it out
Live pictures fine, playback deadThe video is fine. It is the index pointing to the video that is damagedGet a quote, send the drive in
A clicking noise or a slow buzz from inside the boxHeads are down on the surface. With each power-up, more is lostKeep it powered down
A PC calls the disk unformattedNo PC understands the layout a recorder writesOrdinary. Turn down the format prompt
The installer has fitted a new disk alreadyThe original disk is your evidence, wherever it currently isAsk for it back untouched; get a quote, post it
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

Stop it where it stands

Mains off, drive out, and no computer anywhere near it. If the disk won't respond at all, the bench identifies the fault before anything else (heads, motor, board, or the firmware area of the drive itself), and only then does anyone attempt to read it.

No further writing to itRead-only copy taken
03

Repair as far as the image, no further

Repair stops once it reaches the stage where an image can be taken. The write blocker then goes on and the copy is taken read-only, with weak areas read in short passes rather than forced. Since everything after this happens on the copy, the original is handled only once.

Board, motor, headsRead back in short passes
04

Then lift the video out

Where the recorder's layout survived into the image, clips come out in sequence, each with a channel number and a recording time. Where it didn't, the video is extracted by searching the image for the fixed byte pattern every compressed frame starts with, and it plays without labels.

Layout taken off the copyCarved out where none survives
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

  • Nothing about this job is gentle: a surveillance drive works for its whole working life and usually costs less than anything else in the box. This constant workload is what wears most of them out.
  • Windows will report it empty: surveillance recorders can create their own layout for saving information onto the hard drive, and some save directly to the raw drive; therefore, when you plug the drive into your computer, Windows will say you have to format it. Do not format it. All of your recordings are still there underneath.
  • The copy is what gets worked on: a write blocker goes on the recorder's hard drive and a single copy of everything on it is taken. Only then is it safe to open files. The imaging is run once, carefully, as running it multiple times can be the final failure of a hard drive that is already damaged.
  • Three things, and only three, set the limit. The loop reached your hour before we did. Your recordings are in an area of the hard drive that cannot be read. Or your recorder was left to continue recording for another week. Skill plays no part in any of these, and before you pay anything you will know which cause was responsible.

Post the drive, keep the box: recorders are heavy and can be damaged in the post. They are of little use to us when recovering your data. So get a quote first, then physically remove the hard drive from the recorder, make a note of the bay it sat in, and post that single hard drive to us packed so it can't move. A multi-disk NVR is an exception. Video is spread across the disks, so each disk needs to be sent to us, clearly labelled with its bay. Please call us before you start packing. We pay for the postage back to you.

One of these, from start to finish.

NG · NTG-2026-2019ON THE LOG ✓

A gate recorder that failed at a Newark haulage yard

Nobody followed up on the night gate camera, whose playback had stopped working several weeks earlier. Then a load of goods went missing. One of the heads on the drive was failing. Repair went only as far as an image needed, and the surface was read in small passes. Four of the eight channels came back with their time stamps intact. But across the middle of the platter was a band that the drive wouldn't read at all, so whatever was recorded there remains there. A partial recovery, documented as one.

4 of 8 channels returned with their times intact72 hours of work on it

What helps, and what does damage.

Worth doing first

  • Take the power off it first
  • Write down the make, model and the date that matters
  • Get a quote, send the drive; keep the recorder on site
  • Identify who owns the unit, and who can authorise us to start

What makes it harder

  • Leaving it powered in the hope it recovers
  • Agreeing to a reformat so the box boots
  • Putting the disk in a PC to see what's on it
  • Letting a new disk be fitted while the original leaves site

What gets asked before posting.

There is no hard disk, says the menu. Has the video gone with it?

That message doesn't prove this at all. All it's saying is that the recorder can't see its disk. Your video is still on those same platters. However, pull the mains lead first: every hour of recording to a disk that's failing results in some loss.

Windows wants to format the drive. Have I done damage?

No. But do not accept this offer. A recorder writes its own layout, and Windows has no way to recognise that layout. Therefore, a disk full of video appears empty on your computer. Do not accept the offer, unplug the device, and when booking your unit in let us know whether or not a format has occurred, because that changes where the search begins.

Should I send the recorder too?

Only the hard drive itself, after you receive a quote. Recorders are heavy and can be damaged in the post, and nothing we work with on the bench needs one. The exception is an NVR with multiple disks, where video could be stored across all of them. Before packing, please contact us about this and we'll give you guidance on what should be included.

Should the installer just fit a new disk?

Only if the original disk is leaving for good. Put that disk into any recorder and it will start recording over what is on it. Ask for the original disk to be handed over unpowered, inside an anti-static bag. Then keep it safe until you decide if there's anything worth saving on it.

Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.

What the recorder still holds → Copies insurers and police accept → What survives a deletion → 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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