Is there a reason why you cannot use the original machine to have a look at the data on the drive.
I have in the past had a bit of luck copying out the entire block of data and then carving out the footage, depending on the format.
I have also had more luck, where I have imaged the drive, restored it to another drive and then viewed it in the original machine or obtained another recorder/DVD player that was the same. They have a proprietory format on the drive and the manufacturers are normally not very co-operative in helping, even though most have software that will help you with your recovery.
I have also tried my friendly security company/store, who deal in CCTV and they have been very helpful in the past. The good ones seem only to helpful when you explain what you are doing.
Have you tried Linux based tools such as Helix, Spada etc??
Mike
Most of these things have a proprietary file system. You need a raw (dd) image and then carve for the files.
The filesystem used by PVR/DVRs varies by manufacturer, and are typically bespoke, although not always. The main reason for this is to ensure continuous efficient access for reading/writing parallel streams to/from the disk, so the video is usually segmented into large contiguous blocks on the disk (for example using separate block allocation methods); this then ideally requires reverse engineering of the content tables in order to restitch the segments to guarantee the final stream is as originally presented.
Some systems do not use a proprietary disk format, so always worth imaging and then examining with your preferred tool; Some systems use minor variants of standard systems, typically with limited headers and modified identifiers, but can sometimes be examined initially as if they were the original standard file system format (equivalent to examining a partition with no header) and in this way in some cases all files except the video can be accessed, with simple extraction of recorded programme information etc.
Note that the video and audio streams may be stored in either decrypted or encrypted format depending on the system type, the nature of the original transport stream (freeview, free-to-air, pay-tv, local source, etc); for the non-enrypted case playback using TS tools can be achieved, but note that the usual tables required by some applications may not be stored in-stream.
In summary, it's usually possible to extract and play the video/audio (though it may be encrypted), and/or extract the programme information, but can take some effort to identify structures and perform the task precisely.
Phil.
Hi,
there is site
The software
best regards,
Jakub