Digital video recorders data recovery

DVR (Digital Video Recorder) is a specialized device for the recording, storage and playback of video. This is a key element of CCTV. Video recordings of security cameras are often used in court proceedings and corporate investigations, therefore disappearance of data from DVR, by accident or deliberately, may significantly complicate the investigation process.

The most frequent causes of DVR data loss

• erasal or damage of video recordings in DVR;
• loss of access password to the video content;
• HDD initialization (formatting) from DVR when connected to PC;
• improper replacement or reinstallation of storage drive;
• failure storage drive with video recordings;
• software and hardware failures of digital video recorder.

PC-based and autonomous DVRs are the most popular ones as to the architecture type. Digital video recorders, built on the basis of PC are controlled by means of operating system, however specialized video capture circuit boards are used for video processing.

Autonomous DVRs need no PC connection, have their own operating system, use their own (on frequent occasions non-standard) methods of recording, coding and storage of video. They have password protection and recorded data encryption as well. These factors greatly complicate digital video recorders data recovery. HDD, flash, SSD, RAID may be used as a storage media in autonomous DVRs.

EPOS is offering services on data extraction and recovery from DVR

• data extraction from digital video recorder;
• recovering of deleted video recordings;
• access restoration to password-protected DVRs;
• video recordings recovery from faulty digital video recorders;
• converting of non-standard video from DVR to formats compatible with standard PC means (AVI, MPG).

EPOS experts have developed a set of tools and unique techniques that allow us to perform successful file recovery from the digital video recorders in most cases.

Information recovery of from digital video recorder starts with the extraction of sector-wise image of the storage drive and analysis of the information recording and storage principle. Non-destructive copy technologies are used when extracting data from digital video recorders, that makes is possible to use video recordings as evidence in court proceedings. Data recovery works are performed based on the results of the analysis performed. It is not infrequent that at first one shall first recover digital video recorder and then perform subsequent decoding and video recordings saving by using the device itself.

To increase the likelihood of data recovery and to shorten the time frame for the accomplishment of works, it is desirable (and sometimes it is required) to provide not only storage drive, but digital video recorder in which it was installed as well, while making an order.