Retrieving image data from damaged DVR CCTV systems

0870 140 2525

Recovery of image data from CCTV systems

Background
Modern recording techniques have seen the old analogue VCR technology replaced by DVR technology, where data captured by CCTV equipment is written to hard disk.

There are two types of DVR:

  • The commerical DVRs are often geared for shopping centre / town centre surveillance. These devices use proprietary forms of encoding when writing their data to hard disk
  • The non-commerical DVRs are often PC based & used for much smaller operations eg. individual room monitoring etc. Because these systems are PC based, their encoding systems are often based around the Windows or Linux architecture.

Recovery of CCTV image data from hard disk
DVRs record their data to standard hard disk drives found in modern PCs. These hard drives may be the 3.5" desktop variety or the 2.5" laptop variety. Additionally multiple hard disks may be "chained" together in order to offer larger storage capacity and / or data redundancy.

The hard disks found in DVR equipment are prone to all the common standard hard disk problems & failures. Additionally, the environment that these devices sometimes operate in can cause further potential problems. For example, a recent Data Clinic study involving DVR equipment installed in some trains found that a percentage of devices were failing due to complications introduced by carriage vibration.

Data Clinic offer professional data recovery of CCTV footage held on DVR systems - including the de-scrambling of multiplexed video from proprietary encoding systems and image enhancement / manipulation. For further information, please call us on 0870 140 2525

Our hard disk testing facilities also offer a suite of applications for CCTV & DVR equipment.

 


A typical DVR unit. This particular device records images to multiple laptop hard disks, one of which is shown in it's caddy below

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