Investigations & evidence · erased CCTV recordings
These cases are a straight race against the machine's own loop. Get there first and the video comes back, frequently with its clock data intact. Get there late and no lab anywhere can retrieve it, whatever the marketing claims. What follows sets out both endings plainly.
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| The problem | What that tells you | First step |
|---|---|---|
| Someone erased clips through the DVR menu or app | The map entries went; the video is probably still there | Halt the recorder now |
| An installer or the box itself reformatted the disk | A fresh index laid on top of surviving streams | A job for carving — decent odds |
| The unit carried on filming afterwards | Ever since, the loop has been consuming the oldest video | Hours count from here |
| The event falls further back than the loop reaches | Probably written over — we look properly before pricing | A no-cost check and a plain answer |
| Restored footage runs, yet carries no time on screen | Frames carved back without the index's labelling | Ordinary, and we say so beforehand |
| Files someone else recovered refuse to open | Bare streams pulled out and never put back together | We reassemble them into ordinary formats |
As soon as it lands with us, your device gets its own case number. An engineer works out the fault, says what can genuinely be pulled off, then puts one fixed price in writing — no charge for diagnosis, no obligation, and no chargeable work until you approve it.
The unit is switched off, the disk removed, and a read-only copy made. Nothing further can be lost to the loop after that.
We read the manufacturer's own structures off that copy. Wherever they survive, video comes back with its real dates, times and camera names — fit for evidential use.
If that map is broken or missing, we sweep the disk for raw frames and rebuild them into playable files — and you're told plainly which clips keep their original time data and which don't.
You sign off a complete list of the recovered files first; only then does the recovery fee fall due. Everything returns on fresh media, postage paid, and the job stays open until you confirm the files open at your end.
The physics in a sentence: a loop replaces the oldest material first, without pause and without caring what is on it — so whether a deleted clip comes back depends on one variable alone: how much fresh video followed it. Turning the recorder off isn't a precaution; it is the rescue.
Someone on the team deleted what they took for 'old clips', a theft among them. Switching the recorder off that afternoon is what rescued the job. Leftover index entries brought back four of the five lost days complete with timestamps; carving retrieved the fifth, watchable but without labels.
Usually — deleting clears the recorder's index while the footage sits on disk until the loop writes over it. Switch the machine off and the chances are decent.
The old bytes are physically gone, overwritten by newer video. Nothing remains underneath to read, and anyone promising otherwise is selling, not engineering.
Yes, provided the recorder's index is intact. Where we have to carve raw frames instead, the footage plays back but can arrive without its original timestamps and channel names — and we'll flag which clips those are.
Somewhere between a few days and well over a month, depending on camera count, resolution and disk size. Busy multi-camera setups overwrite soonest, so treat it as urgent until the recorder is stopped.
Loops write over themselves, traces fade, deadlines run out. Start a case early — scoping it costs nothing and stays confidential.