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ADR / Evidence, claims and footage / Footage from a recorder disk

Evidence work · reading the disk out of a CCTV recorder

CCTV and DVR recovery, London. Get the recorder off the mains first. Everything else will keep an hour.

Ten seconds at the socket buys you more than anything else you can do today, and here is why. The disk fills, the recorder returns to block one, and new video is laid down across the oldest. Nothing but age governs that order, so the ninety seconds you badly need rank alongside an empty loading bay at four on a Sunday morning. Cut the supply and it halts there. The rest is done at the bench on an image of the disk: the assessment is free, the work is £400 + VAT, the figure is agreed in writing beforehand, and on the majority of jobs an unsuccessful recovery is never invoiced. Small sites are the bulk of it — a gate camera on a yard at Brimsdown, a workshop unit off River Road in Barking, a shop unit on Harlesden High Street.

No fee at all on most jobs if the files do not return Handled as an exhibit from the moment it arrives Each hour the loop covers more of what is left

Talk it over with an engineer, in confidence
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The units we see most of.

Hikvision and HiLook unitsNothing else comes through in anything approaching these quantities. At the head of the disk sits the HIKVISION signature; behind it a B-tree index; and with both in place the clips return labelled.
Dahua unitsSecond by volume here, and drawn to an entirely different plan — DHFS tables, and video kept as .dav files. Whatever parses is parsed; the remainder gets carved.
Swann, Reolink, Annke, UniviewA handful of chipsets sit under dozens of different badges. Take the disk out and the layout is usually one the bench has seen many times, and at that point the lid and its name become irrelevant.
Unbranded grey unitsFitted long ago by a firm no longer trading — no manual, and nobody to telephone. Under the lid, though, is a disk that writes video in blocks, and reading blocks is the whole of what happens here. None of it alters the work.

The symptom, and what to do next.

Not listed? Tell us what it does →
What is going onThe usual reason for itWhere that leaves you
The clips were deleted at the menuOne line left the index; the pictures never movedCut the supply today
It was formatted to get the unit working againAll a format lays down is an empty index; whatever sat underneath it is untouchedCarving lifts the frames back out of the image
No lights, no picture, nothing respondingThe board failed. Video is written to the disk, never to the boardSend the disk; we image it
This was a fortnight agoThe loop may have reached it, and that can be answeredThe free look tells you
It plays back; export will notA USB socket that has failed, or export firmware that has stoppedYour clips are written from our image
A solicitor or loss adjuster has requested itYou receive native clips, MP4 versions, hash values, a method noteSay so when you book in
How it reaches us:send it by tracked, insured post; Guildford takes it in, and the leg home is on us. Unsure what should travel with it? A call before the box is sealed will get you an engineer who can say what to include and what stays behind. The whole of it is spelled out on theguide to packing and posting.

The sequence we follow.

Other jobs on the log →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNothing owed at this stage
02

Mains off, ahead of everything

Every call about footage opens the same way: take the unit off the mains, or lift the disk out of it. Nothing further down this page matters as much, because a recorder with power on it is quietly writing across the very clip you rang about.

Mains off firstThe loop then halts
03

An image nothing can alter

The disk sits behind a hardware write blocker and is read sector by sector, with nothing travelling in the other direction. Once that image exists the recorder ceases to matter to us, and every step afterwards happens on the image.

A write blocker in front of itA failed recorder is no barrier
04

The maker's tables, then carving

Hikvision lays down a HIKBTREE index; Dahua writes DHFS tables. Where enough of one still parses, every clip reaches you with the camera and the recording time already attached to it. Where neither parses, the job steps down a level: the image is combed instead for the fixed byte pattern that begins each compressed frame under either codec, and clips get reassembled from whatever surfaces.

Manufacturer tables firstFrame carving when they are gone
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the jobThe post home is ours

What the bench has learned

  • These disks carry no file system you would recognise — how the blocks are arranged is whatever the manufacturer decided. Connect one to a PC and Windows, unable to interpret it, offers a format; consumer undelete tools show you nothing whatsoever.
  • The pictures sit in the blocks, the labels sit in the index — where the index has survived, every clip reaches you named and timed. Where it has not, the video comes back regardless, but the file will not tell you which lens recorded it or when.
  • A recorder weighs nothing up — oldest block next, every time. An empty corridor and the minute you rang about are one and the same to it.
  • Authority counts here too — whoever books the job must have the right to have that system read. Give the owner's name when the job is booked, and where ownership could be disputed, take advice before a parcel goes anywhere.

On retention: the UK sets no statutory minimum for keeping CCTV. The figure people quote to one another was borrowed from data-protection guidance which actually says footage should not be held once the purpose behind holding it has passed — a rule about reasons rather than about disks. Your recorder is an arithmetic problem: cameras, times bitrate, onto a disk of a given size. Nobody can work that out down a telephone line, and there is no need for us to: the unit has the answer already. Against each camera, the unit's own playback calendar shows the oldest date still held. That is the only figure anyone can honestly give you, and it slides forward every hour the box stays on.

One job, followed all the way through.

LDN · ADR-2026-3096JOB LOGGED ✓

The London shop waited nine days before asking for footage

Nine days went by before the adjuster asked for the footage, and throughout that time the recorder had stayed on. We took the disk, made an image of it, then read the index; the minutes at issue turned out to sit in blocks the loop had not revisited. A copy went for viewing; another was filed with the claim. Leaving nine days to luck is a lot, which is why day one and the mains switch are what we press for.

The entire incidentlifted whole off the disk3days here, and back to you

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Take the unit off the mains
  • Write down the cameras and times
  • Send the disk alone; keep the housing
  • Name the copy's recipient, and tell us the examination is yours to authorise

What sets us back

  • Leaving it powered while you decide
  • Erasing old clips to make room
  • A firmware update or a factory reset
  • Repeating an export that has already failed

The questions that come up first.

Can footage deleted from a recorder be recovered?

Ordinarily, yes. One thing decides it: whether the supply was cut before the loop worked its way round to that stretch of disk again. Deleting a clip amends the catalogue and leaves the picture lying precisely where it was, and there it stays until newer video claims those blocks.

And if the unit has already recorded over it?

Then it is gone. Newer video occupies those blocks, with no earlier layer waiting beneath — not on this bench and not at any other laboratory. Hence the single instruction that opens every call: get the supply off.

The recorder has stopped working. Has the video stopped with it?

Seldom. Three parts make up a DVR: the housing, the board and the hard disk. Video was only ever written to the last of those, so a board past repair is an inconvenience rather than an obstacle — out comes the disk, an image is made, and everything afterwards runs on the image.

How long have I actually got?

Capacity, camera count and bitrate settle that between them, and no two systems arrive at the same answer. A forecourt with movement across every lens comes back round to its earliest hour much faster than its owner would guess. The clock runs for as long as the unit draws power.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Clips deleted, and what is left → Copies the police and insurers take → How much time is left → When the recorder disk fails → A disc nothing will open → The drive inside the machine → Work that reaches court →

Off the mains first, because that is what protects the evidence.

Whatever holds the evidence, take it off power before anything else — a recorder that is still running overwrites its own oldest material, hour by hour. Send it to us after that. Looking costs nothing; recorder work is £400 + VAT and forensic instructions start at £800 + VAT, both settled in writing beforehand. What sits on that disk stays here.

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Price my job Sending it to Guildford