viewing a dvr hard drive on a pc

[sailorguy 0]

I have recently bought a dvr with a seagate ide hard drive for monitoring the use of a boat. The plan was to leave the dvr on the boat all the time and take the hard drive home for analysis on the PC. I bought a caddy for the pc naively expecting to just slot the hard drive in and view the results on the pc.

 

It doesn't work like this does it. I put the hard drive in and eventually got the pc to see it through formatting it to NTFS, this process wiped the contents. I then put it back into the DVR which promptly formatted it back to something else and now the pc can't see it again.

 

The question is is there a device I can use to enable a windows xp pc to download the data directly from the dvr ide hard drive for recording edited highlights onto a dvd, or will I need to buy another dvr to keep at home to play the hard drive contents into a video capture card.

 

Sorry if it's a bit vague but I'm new to this technology and it's a steep learning curve that I only started a couple of days ago. I think the shop assistant I asked for advice misled me a bit....

[VST_Man 1]

I might try to add a wireless client on your boat so that when you dock it you can access it via the wireless connection. You'd have to add a wireless connection to your home network if you don't have it?

[scorpion 0]

It is designed this way so someone cannot alter the video.

 

There fore you would have to create an "emulator" program that would run on your PC to allow you to view your hard drive.

 

For us to create one we would have to sell a million units, and we cannot find enough people to put one together.

 

If you create one let us know!

[todd2 0]

First, I'm a bit concerned about your use of the 3.5 HDD on the boat.

HDD are not designed to be jostled about--especially when running, but

even if not running. Even if the unit is shock mounted, you'll still get

bearing wear if the drive is running and you repeated bob to and fro,

due to gyroscopic loading.

 

I think a laptop drive might be more resilient, but it would probably

require extra work to convert to EIDE interface.

 

As far as the format of the data on the drive, not sure why it would

start auto-formatting without human intervention when hooked up

to the PC; that should never happen.

 

If the format is proprietary, you'll need to reverse engineer it. Do a low

level format of the drive to wipe it to all 0's, and then put it in the DVR

(which I believe just does a quick format) and then record just a few

minutes of video. With a sector editor you should be able to search

the disk for the non-empty sectors and copy them to your main PC

hard drive for analysis. If you know the compression method, it should

make your job easier.

 

Actually, what you really need is a logic analyzer; you could clip onto the

EIDE cable when the drive is installed in the DVR and snoop the command

sequence going between the controller and drive to determine what

sectors are being written. This requires much more money, though.

 

Or....you could also get TWO dvrs of the same model, of course,

and view the drive at home that way!

[scorpion 0]

You have my undivided attention!

 

Tell me more in detail.

 

I have never used a sector editor, and I do not know where to get one.

 

Which "logic analyzer did you have in mind?

 

Thanks!

[todd2 0]

A sector editor is just a piece of software that lets you read and write disk sectors directly,

independently of any file system format on the drive (FAT, FAT32, NTFS, etc.) You'll

find several freeware or shareware versions on the web.

 

A logic analyzer is an expensive piece of hardware somewhat similar to an oscilloscope,

but it has many more channels, logs the values across time, and operates digitally. I

checked the price on a Fluke logic analyzer with 96 channels, and we're talking $10,000.

 

You can do the research as easily as me on Google. With a minimum budget, the software

approach is only reasonable path, but will require a lot of smarts and a little time or a little

smarts and a lot of time.

[scorpion 0]

I am not smart, and I have no time!! LOL!!!

 

I wanted you to hand me an emulator for free delivered on a velvet pillow, sitting on a silver tray!! Is this too much to ask?? YES? Oh darn!