Investigations & evidence · failed DVR and NVR disks
A boot loop, a black grid, no disk reported, or live pictures that will not play back — nearly always the hard drive in the recorder, not the recorder itself. Surveillance disks are written to every second they are powered, and in most installations they are the cheapest thing in the box. Take the mains off now. The loop is still running, and it is eating the footage you want.
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0800 6890668
| What you see | What the fault is | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| The unit reboots itself over and over | It hangs waiting on a disk that never answers | Off at the mains, now |
| The menu reports no hard disk at all | The drive has dropped off the bus, or its heads have | Refuse any offer to reformat, and take it out |
| Live view is fine, playback is not | The pictures are still there; the index that points at them is damaged | Send us the drive |
| There is a click, or a slow buzz, from the box | Heads touching down. Every power-up costs you more of it | Do not switch it on again |
| A PC says the disk is not formatted | Recorders write a layout no computer understands | Normal. Refuse the format prompt |
| The installer has already put a new disk in | The old drive is the evidence, whoever has it now | Get it back unused, then send it |
Each item that arrives gets a case number the day it lands. An engineer looks at it and finds the real fault, and that costs you nothing. You are told in plain terms which files can come off the drive and which cannot. A price follows — one figure, written down. No work starts until you have seen it and agreed to it.
Mains off, disk out, nothing plugged into a computer. If the drive is dead the fault is found on the bench first — heads, motor, board or firmware — and only then is it read.
The drive is repaired only as far as it has to be, no further, and then copied read-only behind a write blocker. Weak areas are taken in short passes rather than hammered at. Everything after that happens on the copy, so the original is handled once and left alone.
Where the recorder's own layout survives on the image, clips come out in order with their channel and their recording time. Where it does not, the image is scanned for the byte markers that start each H.264 or H.265 frame and the pictures are rebuilt without labels.
You are not billed while you are still thinking. The list of what came off the drive goes to you first, and the invoice waits on your word. Files go home on media bought in for the job, with the postage back on us. We keep the job open until you have opened them on your own machine.
Send the drive, not the box: a recorder is heavy, it gets knocked about in the post, and we do not need it here. Take the disk out, note which caddy it came from, and post that on its own, packed so it cannot move. The one exception is a multi-disk NVR. Where the video is spread across several drives they all have to come, and in order, so ring before it goes and we will tell you what to send.
The night gate camera had stopped playing back weeks earlier and nobody had chased it up. Then a load went missing. The drive had a bad head, so it was repaired far enough to image and then copied in short passes. Four of the eight channels came back with their times on. A band in the middle never read, and what sat in it did not come back.
Not on its own, no. That message means the recorder cannot talk to the drive. The video is still on the platters. Power the unit off at the mains before anything else, because a disk that is struggling gets worse every hour it is asked to keep writing.
No, and do not accept that prompt. Recorders write their own layout rather than one Windows knows, so a full disk looks blank to a PC. Say no, unplug it, and tell us if a format was already run — it changes what we look for.
The drive on its own. The box is heavy, it gets damaged in the post, and we do not need it. The exception is a multi-disk NVR, where the video is spread over several drives: ring first and we will tell you what to send.
Only if the old one comes out and stays out. Once it is running in another recorder it is being written to again. Ask for it back unused, in an anti-static bag, and keep it aside until you know whether you need what is on it.
The clip you want is being written over while you read this, and the deadline has not shifted. Log a job. The first look costs nothing, and what you tell us stays private.