NVR Hanging during boot up

Manual ??? Hahaha:laugh: .... this was an ebay purchase about 4 or 5 years ago so i have no documentation left after all that time...

Any suggestions? :-/
 
When HDSP says the drive's health is at 14 PERCENT, it is a goner. The overview tab is likely all red (I see a red X at the top) and says backup your stuff now, the ship is sinking... Replacement is now non-negotiable.

As far as installing a new one, it should just be 4 screws (either bottom of drive or on the sides with brackets) and 2 connectors. That's all there is to it. If the recorder has a model sticker anywhere, or if you can also post a pic of the front panel, that would be helpful. Or even a pic of the client software you use. Those are all viable clues.

I'm not sure as to the specifics of what HDSP determines to be bad sectors vs reallocated, but as @alastairstevenson said, each drive is shipped with a stash of "spare sectors". When the heads come across a bad sector, it flags it as unusable in its internal sector map, so as the drive moves on it knows never to write to that area of the platter(s) again. After so many sectors fail and it runs out of places to reallocate the data, or spare sectors (different areas of the platter) that is when SMART generally is going to report bad sectors. Reallocated effectively is saying that's how many died, but were replaced with good ones so you should still be fine. However, as that number continues to rise, it's a sign that there may not be an end in sight and replacement could near as it is quickly depleting spares.

Hard drives are very much sensitive devices, both physically and logically, which is why SMART and tools like Hard Disk Sentinel are priceless, especially when a drive contains important data such as incriminating evidence or a decade's worth of family photos. Hard Disk Sentinel is not the only diagnostic application to make these determinations, but I have found it to be extremely thorough and powerful insight into what's going on with a given drive. So I've just stuck with it. I see it has also helped you make the determination that you unfortunately need to purchase a new drive :/


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@CustomIPCam - what's the model number of your NVR?
I did a quick Google search for the user manual, but it didn't come up with much more than a few dodgy sites.
It's interesting that your pics of the bootup screen are more reminiscent of a PC BIOS than an eLinux box.
 
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Hi Corey

Yes, you are right, the old HDD is dead. With regard to the new WD Purple HDD, I have plugged it in but the problem is that it is when I start the NVR, it says:

DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

So it doesn't recognise that a disk is attached (as this is the same message i get when no disk is attached to the NVR).

Below are a few images of the outside and inside of the NVR:
 
You have a PC based recorder. That's a regular computer system, not an embedded Linux recorder like most cable box-looking recorders are. This tells me that your old hard drive contained the operating system as well. Do you know if it was running Windows? Or any other OS?

Chances are it's recognizing the new hard drive just fine. Disk boot failure is telling you not that the drive is not visible, but that there is no bootable OS on it.

I don't see any pictures of the NVR. Forgot to attach?


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There is a remote possibility that you could get a clue from the faulty HDD what the operating environment of the NVR is.
If you don't get the opportunity for the NVR to boot into a basic mode where it will initialise the HDD, it's unlikely you will be able to install the needed files on the HDD without some sort of installable system distribution media.
Ideally on a Linux machine, but on the Windows machine you plugged it into you should be able to at least see what type of partition(s) exist on the HDD.
 
A quick Google search indicates WAPA is a manufacturer of capture cards. This box must have been running Wjndows. (That's the dominant OS for most capture cards)
It's a regular old computer with an ExpressCard connected to it.

You'll likely need to fetch a copy of Windows somehow some way, reload drivers for the card and the capture card software.

Connecting the old drive to another Windows system, if you can see the drive contents at all, it's an NTFS-formatted drive it had Windows on it. If you can't read or see it, or it has no folder named "Windows" on it, it's Linux.

2 other asides:
- kudos to the purple purchase. Expensive but I love those drives. Really I haven't had many problems at all with the latest WD offerings. Back in the day they used to die all of the time.

- the drive that died on you was a Seagate. The amount of seagates I have to replace is astonishing. Back when WD sucked I always purchased Seagate. Many of those older ones are still in service. Now all I hear and work with is drives dying within a year or two. No thanks.

- the other drive in the computer you installed HDST on is a Samsung. Personally those I've found to be even better than WD, but unfortunately Samsung sold out to WD. So if you ever see a newer Samsung drive or anything branded as SpinPoint, they're junk. Already had two "fake" samsungs die on me in the last 3 years. Never again.


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I stand corrected: I've never seen a set top-style NVR behave like a computer. Although your pic of the back has a lot of PC-resembling ports, they clearly share a lot in common. Linux is looking like more of a possibility. What we know for sure is the HDD was used for well beyond just data storage, as the device can't start.

Does it have a standard PC BIOS splash with hot keys to press? Sometimes you might have a "press F (some number) for recovery"

I'm skeptical that it has in-built recovery but never say never.


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WAPA's website is indicated by Google to contain malware. Sidestepping the warning, it returns a 503 service unavailable error so the site is dead anyways.

This website which appears to be a dealer, has WAPA software available for download. Take a look here and see if any of this involves reloading the OS onto an embedded device.
http://www.eagleviewsecurity.co.za/index.php/download/category/2-wapa-ip-camera-software#


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Thanks guys...

The NVR (or is it DVR) only runs for 2-3 seconds before halting at the PCI Devices section.
It starts off doing the RAM check and then the HDD check then onto the PCI Devices where is stops.

I removed the old Seagate Barracuda drive and connected it to a standard Windows 8 PC and it is not visible in Windows Explorer.

If i go to the disk management tool in Windows (where you can change drive letters, defrag, etc...), the disk is visible but has no drive letter assigned.
If i right click to see the menu, most of the options are greyed out...

There is a label on the outside of the NVR which states that it is a:

BL-104P-600 CN System

That's all I know...
 
Forgot to mention that I can press DEL to go into the BIOS and also F12 for boot menu...

This is a screen grab of the first part of the boot up sequence:

a5.jpg
 
*edit*
On the WAPA Brazil site I linked to is a Windows executable that may well be the NVR app that's shown in the user manual.
I'd follow @CoreyX64 suggestion and install Windows (7 would be my preference) on the HDD and plug it in to the NVR.
You never know - the drivers may exist.
That's a PC BIOS in your screenshot.
 
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Thanks Alastair...

I thought Corey changed his mind and suspected it my be linux

Any suggestions on how to proceed? Or should i just forget it and buy a new DVR/NVR?

Thanks
 
A few things catch my eye with that POST screen:
- Genuine Intel. Intel has not branded their chips like this in over 10 years. IIRC, Pentium 4 was the last chip to be branded "genuine".

- clock speed. That is an 800Mhz Intel chip. SLOW. I'd go so far as to say it's a pentium 3 based on speed alone, but DDR256 is PC2100 RAM which wasn't developed until The Pentium 4 era. In which case that's probably an underclocked special version of a Pentium 4 type chip.

I would not even attempt to load Windows 7 based on those hardware specs alone. This definitely falls into XP territory if it did run Windows.

The BIOS shows a revision date of September 2007 which is not as old as the hardware I describe but that doesn't mean anything because older hardware is always cheaper. It was sufficient for what the box needed to operate so that's probably why they went with it.


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I'm torn...it looks like a duck but meows like a frog. Bark bark!

The low end hardware is indicative of Linux because Linux just runs well on most everything. It strength over Windows is hardware requirements. There's many flavors of Linux that can run on the crappiest of systems and outpace Windows like nothing else. I can only speculate as to what was on their before based on context clues and surrounding evidence (your pictures).

This is such a rare device that finding support for it is extremely difficult. What you could do is this:

- load XP (need to find a source first, I have ISO images I can give you if you have blank CDs to burn to or make a bootable flash drive)

Let's assume this didn't have Windows on it. Fine. Use device manager to grab as much info on the hardware as you can (Vendor ID's Device IDs etc). Snap pics and document.

Try and download some of the WAPA software I linked you to. Nothing pertaining to client software, but the last one in the list on that site might have something related to embedded devices. Read the descriptions. I didn't thoroughly but it's ultimately your device so the more you learn about it, the better chances you have of recovering it. And if problems happen in the future you're more fluent on what you're up against.


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