I Inadvertently formatted my NVR, can I restore or recover past videos?

[D!ngo]

I have an LTS LTN8916-P16 NVR with (2) 2.5T hard drives hooked up to 16 ip cameras.

My local police ask if I can provide videos of suspicious activities on my street. When I found the video, I wanted to export it via a USB to a thumbdrive. I selected a video in the "export" menu and click the export buttton. but nothing happened. I thought maybe because I formatted my thumbdrive on my computer, the NVR didn't recognize it. So seeing there was a format button, I clicked that thinking it would format the thumbdrive. (I mean logically, why would a format button in the export menu would format anything internally?) THAT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE!!!

It formatted my NVR drives instead. There were no mention in the warning box that it will format the hard drive. Now I can't replay any of the videos from any cameras prior to this.

I searched here and googled ways to restore/recover my old data but couldn't find anything. I emailed Frankie Chan from LTS who sold my this system but he never replied.

Does anyone know a way to get my data back? Please help.

Thanks,

Derek

*changed "accidentally" to "inadvertently" in title...cause it wasn't an accident.
*Found out that my hard drives were 2.5T each, so edited 1T to 2.5T hard drives

 

[mat200]

I have an LTS LTN8916-P16 NVR with (2) 1T hard drives hooked up to 16 ip cameras.

My local police ask if I can provide videos of suspicious activities on my street. When I found the video, I wanted to export it via a USB to a thumbdrive. I selected a video in the "export" menu and click the export buttton. but nothing happened. I thought maybe because I formatted my thumbdrive on my computer, the NVR didn't recognize it. So seeing there was a format button, I clicked that thinking it would format the thumbdrive. (I mean logically, why would a format button in the export menu would format anything internally?) THAT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE!!!

It formatted my NVR drives instead. There were no mention in the warning box that it will format the hard drive. Now I can't replay any of the videos from any cameras prior to this.

I searched here and googled ways to restore/recover my old data but couldn't find anything. I emailed Frankie Chan from LTS who sold my this system but he never replied.

Does anyone know a way to get my data back? Please help.

Thanks,

Derek

Hi Derek,

While I do not know the UI of the NVR, it should have been clear to anyone using the NVR what you are attempting to format as the NVR's UI normally indicates which HDD / USB drive you are attempting to format.

Formatting a HDD will make it a challenge to access the videos. .. probably best to stop and give the HDD to the police and have them attempt a recovery at this point and see if they can so something about that which you are not skilled at doing. Depending on the police force, they may have access to specialist who have more tools to check for videos on the HDD.

 

[D!ngo]

Hi Derek,

While I don not know the UI of the NVR, it should have been clear to anyone using the NVR what you are attempting to format as the NVR's UI normally indicates which HDD / USB drive you are attempting to format.

Formatting a HDD will make it a challenge to access the videos. .. probably best to stop and give the HDD to the police and have them attempt a recovery at this point and see if they can so something about that which you are not skilled at doing. Depending on the police force, they may have access to specialist who have more tools to check for videos on the HDD.

Hi mat200, thanks for the reply.

Luckily the police request was not crucial. My neighbors also have cameras and I think they were adequate enough for them to do the investigation.

Whoever designed the features of this LTS NVR should have their heads smacked. I mean, why would they put a FORMAT feature in an "EXPORT" menu and not inside the "HDD" menu is just dumb, IMO. You're trying to export a file so why would you need to format the hard drive at that point???
It didn't warn that it will be formatting my HARD drive, just "your drive will be formatted"...a generic warning that always show up when you're delete anything.

There are certain devices that required you to format your flash drive or SD card through their own devices to ensure compatibility, so I thought this was the case. In fact iirc, their cameras required you to do exactly this.

Navigating through the menus and submenus are just hideous. Not at all user friendly. Additionally, whenever I do replay of events using the NVR, certain days will have "SMART" search and some days don't. It does it whenever it feels like it. I have done a couple of software updates but the UI and search feature are still trash. I can't even use the motion detection within their "draw a parallelogram" function.

I should have done it through the web portal but I forgot my username and password because I haven't used it for over a year and thought it'll be easier going through the NVR thinking it's just one file.

When I first bought this system, being a newbie and not knowing what to get, I searched here and got a lot of praise for LTS and Frankie Chan was recommended. Their cameras are good, certainly better than my neighbor's Lorex. However, their NVRs are garbage. I am going to use this NVR as a decoy when I switch to another system.

 

[SyconsciousAu]

Does anyone know a way to get my data back? Please help.

It's possible, but you need to turn off the NVR now and remove the drive. The longer you leave it running, the less chance of getting any video back.

 

[D!ngo]

It's possible, but you need to turn off the NVR now and remove the drive. The longer you leave it running, the less chance of getting any video back.

Hi SyconsciousAu,

Can you elaborate on how to do this? Is it through a professional service or something I can do it my self?

I have 5T of space and, before the format, I think I was able to go back at least 2 years. Would it suffice to say that any new videos would override old files? Or will it do randomly since it has been formatted?

*Edited 2T to 5T

 

[alastairstevenson]

I think I was able to go back at least 2 years.

Apologies for jumping in - but even for event-only recording I'd say that was extremely unlikely.
Do you mean 2 months?
Even that's a stretch for 16 cameras on event-only recording.

On the NVR 'format' of its HDD -
From what I've seen, various brands of NVR don't use even a Linux-standard type of partition never mind one that Windows recognises.
Maybe to reduce processing overhead, they just have a really simple arrangement of a recording index, a bit like the ancient FAT16 structure.
The recorded data won't be written over on a formal, just the index structure that points to it.
If you really wanted to restore any data, the simplest approach would be to 'clone' the HDD - plenty of tools that would do this - and work on the clone.

 

[SyconsciousAu]

Is it through a professional service or something I can do it my self?

You can do it yourself. Plenty of free and paid data recovery options available, but as @alastairstevenson points out always work on a copy and not the original.

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www.sodapdf.com

Alternatively, as the Police are already looking to get the video from you, they may be able to recover the data. That will of course depend on your local Police Department and their resources.

 

[mat200]

..

When I first bought this system, being a newbie and not knowing what to get, I searched here and got a lot of praise for LTS and Frankie Chan was recommended. Their cameras are good, certainly better than my neighbor's Lorex. ..

FYI - for those reading this later.

Lorex is a brand and is currently owned by Dahua ( recently purchased in last couple of years iirc )
LTS largely up to now was a brand using Hikvision OEM products.

Both Dahua and Hikvision make a large range of OEM products - some better than others. So do dig deeper when comparing your options - try to compare particular models.

 

[D!ngo]

Thank you to all who replied.

Luckily, I don't have anything that important to warrant the time spend to get the data back. Just some dog walkers who didn't pick up after themselves and some strange dude stopped in front of my driveway and knocked on my door.

I'm just p****d that the programmers/engineers who designed their UI to be so careless as to put something so crucial in a place where it can easily let users make a critical mistake. On top of that they didn't even warn that the ALL IMPORTANT hard disks would be the ones that will be erased. That is no different than going to the USB ports on your computer to format a card and instead of your card, all your HD data is wiped out!

Apologies for jumping in - but even for event-only recording I'd say that was extremely unlikely.
Do you mean 2 months?
Even that's a stretch for 16 cameras on event-only recording.

I'm sure I can go back past 2 years because when I was switching insurance company that required the date I bought my car, I misplaced my paperwork so I went back to my video to find the exact date almost 2 years prior...and I can see that I could go back even further. I'm not sure but I think my NVR uses some kind of compression so maybe...