CCTV Data Recovery Service

For the purposes of CCTV Data Recovery, we are only interested in the hard disk drives.

Often DVR’s are not configured to alert users to hard drive failures, therefore unless the DVR itself fails, it can be a while before the failed hard disk drive is noticed.

If you need footage of an incident, unplug the recorder now. CCTV systems record in a loop — once the drive is full, the oldest footage is overwritten. Every hour the recorder keeps running after an incident is an hour closer to the footage you need being recorded over. Power it down first, then contact us.

Once the failure is noticed – and the footage is required – we often see a common mistake being made.

An assumption that removing the hard drive from one DVR system and installing it into a different system, will give access to the files. This mistake is possibly the worst mistake you can make; usually, this overwrites the stored data, as the ‘different’ DVR makes the old hard drive compatible with its new system.

This doesn’t always mean that critical footage cannot be recovered, but it certainly makes an already complicated job, more difficult.

Also, DVR’s can be configured using RAID; thus, multiple hard drives will be present inside the digital video recorder. Although it is rare for multiple drives to fail all at once, it does happen.

Furthermore, dealing with the malfunctioning hard drives is only part of the equation of recovering the data, as DVR hard drives often use proprietary file systems and unique methods of storing data files, making accessing the data a very complicated task.

Moreover, the digital video recorders operating systems are not universal, therefore, handling the video files that these systems create, can be challenging as there are over 3000 video file formats within the CCTV industry, further adding to the complexity of playback of the files.

With CCTV DVR systems being so varied, the importance of having CCTV Data Recovery performed by competent companies – with specialist equipment and knowledge – to maximise the chance of recovering your data, is imperative.

Dragon Data Recovery is one such company that possesses specialist equipment and the necessary skills needed to recover your data from failed Digital-Video-Recorders.

Listed below are some common ways to identify if your CCTV digital video recorders hard drive has problems.

Different DVR manufacturers program their devices to report errors in different ways.  There are many strange things DVR devices can do when they are malfunctioning, if your symptom is not listed below, describe it on our enquiry form and we’ll tell you what you’re dealing with.

Is your CCTV Digital-Video-Recorder demonstrating any of these faults?

• Are there any unusual beeps or messages when booting up the DVR device?
• Is the DVR completely dead? No life in it whatsoever?
• Has the DVR device become inaccessible?
• Is the DVR struggling to play back video files?
• Are the saved video files disappearing?
• Has the DVR been physically damaged from an accidental drop or sabotaged?
• Has the DVR been affected by a power surge or lightning strike?
• Can you hear any strange clicking sounds when powering up the DVR?

If your Digital-Video-Recorder is doing any of the above, power it down and start your enquiry here — and if the footage is needed by the police, an insurer or a court, say so in your message, because timing and handling matter for evidential use.

About Our Data Recovery Laboratory

Dragon Data Recovery is a genuine recovery laboratory — not a shopfront that forwards drives on. Every recovery happens at our own lab on the Wirral, on professional equipment: Ace Laboratory PC-3000 systems, DeepSpar Disk Imagers and a class 100 clean room facility for mechanical work.

You deal directly with the engineers handling your case, you approve a fixed written quote before any chargeable work begins, and if we can’t recover meaningful data, there’s no fee to pay.

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