Data Recovery from Surveillance Disks

[samntha fox]

Hi Friends Good Morning.

With Ref. to following topic of " CCTV DVR Recovery "  from hddguru forum,

I would like to know how you guys do recovery from formatted / reinitiated hard disk.

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=45483

I have tried all commercial tools (trial copies) & have tried support from them but unable to reconstruct data properly.

Zero Alpha (Australia) has hinted that its simple script he uses but has refused to sell it .

Buying expensive tools is not commercially practical as none of the single product may work for particular case ,buying all subscription based tools is out of question.

Can someone pls. help.I can share Image (15GB )  

Thank you

[t...@desertdatarecovery.com]

A lot of people say a lot of things on HDDGuru.

What drive model was the data on?

And a 15GB image for surveillance data is very small (unless it’s just a sample).

 

Tim Homer - Lead Engineer

Desert Data Recovery

+1 (602) 686 2622

t...@desertdatarecovery.com

www.desertdatarecovery.com

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[pbzcbf...@gmail.com]

There is a lot of chest beating going on at HDD Guru. However, I have watched Zero Alpha's YT channel and am confident that he can do what he claims. I'm a lousy programmer, but I have reverse engineered some simple file systems and written tools to extract the files, so I know it can be a relatively easy job (if I can find the motivation).

[Ritesh Jokhani]

Hi Tim

Thanks for replying , yes recovery may not be simple as stated as every  DVR manufacturer has his own encoding .

Presently disk has WFS0.4 signature but originally I think it was from hikvision DVR (customer inserted disk in another DVR & initiated disk)

I have 2 sample chunks of disk ( from LBA 0 & middle of the 4TB disk) 

I think first 500MB of disk is overwritten so these tools are unable to identify metadata.

None of them is able to reconstruct stream properly.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/datarecoverycertification/02dd01dc176d%24a36ce890%24ea46b9b0%24%40desertdatarecovery.com.

[Ritesh Jokhani]

Thanks , appreciate it.

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[t...@desertdatarecovery.com]

You may well find in your case that that more than 500mb of data has been overwritten. You can never believe what the client tell you.  

 

 

From: datarecovery...@googlegroups.com <datarecovery...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ritesh Jokhani
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2025 11:38 PM
To: datarecovery...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Data Recovery from Surveillance Disks

 

Hi Tim

Thanks for replying , yes recovery may not be simple as stated as every  DVR manufacturer has his own encoding .

Presently disk has WFS0.4 signature but originally I think it was from hikvision DVR (customer inserted disk in another DVR & initiated disk)

I have 2 sample chunks of disk ( from LBA 0 & middle of the 4TB disk) 

I think first 500MB of disk is overwritten so these tools are unable to identify metadata.

None of them is able to reconstruct stream properly.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/datarecoverycertification/CAKtvXXehz-G1de_CNJnXJdFAJhybdxatmSL6XJicu%3DcsREkv2g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ritesh Jokhani]

Yes Tim Very true.

Thanks 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/datarecoverycertification/03d601dc1827%24af73b820%240e5b2860%24%40desertdatarecovery.com.

[Abdur Rahim Sopon]

Dolphin DVR software can't detect footage? 

Best Regards

Abdur rahim sopon

Data Recovery expert

Founder of Data Recovery BD™

WP/call:+8801912881685

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/datarecoverycertification/CAKtvXXfyE5U5oK4J33tH4BkdCSPseO7EdXbOQHMpbP8_nGhszw%40mail.gmail.com.

[samntha fox]

Hi Abdur

I tried DVR Examiner , HX -DVR , MyccTV Recovery (UFS) but large no of small clips were getting recovered & shown (trial limitations)

However Dolphin DVR was the only software which showed larger sized files ,but again due to trial limitation I can only check preview.

I have emailed dolphin labs & got quotation but charges for such cases are low here in India ($100-$200) so spending $1000 is not possible right now for me.

Thanks for replying

[samntha fox]

Hi Abdur 

yes Dolphin DVR was the only software which showed larger file size. Due to trial version limitations I could not check full output.

I have emailed Dolphin support as well they said outcome of both Trial & business editions will be same.

Charges for such cases here are as low as $100 so I cannot afford to spend $1000 considering its not clear whether required 10 min footage will get recovered.

I am looking for some alternate means.

Thanks for replying.

On Saturday, August 30, 2025 at 9:18:20 PM UTC+5:30 sopo...@gmail.com wrote:

[samntha fox]

Hi Abdur

Yes only Dolphin DVR & shown larger sized files but due to trial limitations I could see only small preview . Recovery charges are very small here (often as low as $ 100-$200) so buying $1000 Dolphin DVR is not possible for me as its not clear yet whether required 10 min footage is present or nor (again large no of files were traced by Dolphin) I have approched dolphin support but they say  output of Trial copy will be same as Business license.

I am looking for an alternate solution for this case.

Thanks for replying.

On Saturday, August 30, 2025 at 9:18:20 PM UTC+5:30 sopo...@gmail.com wrote: