Investigations & evidence · deleted DVR video
One question decides these jobs: did the recorder keep running? Stop it in time and the footage usually returns, often with dates and channels attached. Let the loop finish its circuit and nothing brings that video back — we'd rather say so plainly than sell false hope. Both outcomes are set out below.
A quiet word, in confidence
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| What's wrong | What it usually means | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| Recordings deleted via the menu or phone app | Only the catalogue suffered — footage likely intact | Stop the machine at once |
| The disk was reformatted, by a person or the unit | New empty index; the old video streams sit beneath | Carving handles this, with fair odds |
| Recording never stopped after the deletion | Each passing hour the loop erases more of the oldest material | Act today, not next week |
| The incident predates everything on the disk | Likely gone — but we check the disk before quoting | Free diagnosis, honest verdict |
| Recovered clips play, but without any timestamp | Carved video, which loses the index's labels | Normal — and flagged before you commit |
| Another firm's recovered files won't play | Raw stream data extracted without reassembly | We rebuild them into standard video |
Your device is logged under its own case number the day it arrives. An engineer finds the fault, tells you plainly what stands a real chance of coming back, and writes you one fixed quote. Nothing is charged for that look, nothing obliges you, and paid work starts only when you say so.
First, the recorder is powered down, its drive comes out, and we take a read-only image. From that moment the loop can't take anything else.
On the image we look for the manufacturer's private index structures. Where enough survives, clips return carrying their genuine channel names, dates and times — the version evidence work wants.
Where the catalogue is beyond repair, we scan every sector for H.264/H.265 frames and stitch them into watchable files — and we're clear about which recovered clips kept their timing data and which came back bare.
Before any fee falls due you see a full listing of everything recovered and approve it. Your files travel back on brand-new media, return postage on us, and the case stays open until you've confirmed everything opens on your own machine.
The mechanism, briefly: the loop always writes over the oldest sectors next, with no regard for their contents — meaning a deleted clip survives only until enough new recording has passed through. That's why powering the unit down isn't caution; it's the recovery itself.
A staff member cleared out 'old clips' — one of which showed a theft. What saved it was powering the recorder down the same afternoon. Four of the five missing days returned through surviving index entries, timestamps intact; the fifth came back by carving, playable though unlabelled.
More often than not. Deleting wipes the index, not the video — clips sit on disk until the loop comes round again. Power the recorder down and the odds stay fair.
Newer video has physically replaced the old bytes, and nothing sits underneath to read back. Anyone who promises otherwise is in sales, not engineering.
Usually, if the recorder's index has survived. When we're forced to carve frames raw, the clips still play, though timestamps and channel names may be missing — and we'll point out exactly which clips came back that way.
Anything from days to a month or more — it hangs on how many cameras, what resolution and how big the disk. The busier the system, the sooner it overwrites, so stop the recorder and treat the clock as running.
Recorders overwrite on a loop, evidence weakens, time limits pass. Open a case early — the first look is free and confidential.