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SyconsciousAu

Post Lightning Strike Recovery

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I've got an 8 camera system with a mix of Dahua and Hikvision cameras. My NVR is a windows based PC with an I5 processor running Blue Iris. A pair of 3TB Western Digital Red hard drives do the storage. I have them set up in Raid1. A Big UPS/Surge protector ensures things remain running as they should if the power goes out. Or so I thought

 

Last night we had a nasty thunderstorm here. One of the hits was very close. Big Flash, Big Bang, and the lights go out for a second before coming back on. I check everything. Monitor is up, cameras are showing their streams as advertised. I tried to log in remotely by VNC to the server without success so I could check on the other cameras I have hidden from view. No Joy. The VNC Server on the NVR isn't responding. Try to reboot the NVR locally and windows refuses to load claiming no operating system detected. Recovery with the windows disk is attempted but it doesn't even recognise that I have windows installed. The raid utility reports that one disk is trying to verify, and the other requires initialisation.

 

I was going to try a fresh windows install but the windows installer was showing I had four drives, none of which would allow anything to be loaded onto it.

 

I ended up opening the case and disconnecting one of the drives. A miracle occurred. Windows booted. Blue Iris booted. I reconnected the drive and the system began to rebuild it over the next 10 hours.

 

Today both drives are back online and I have had no data loss.

 

I have to say I am really glad I spent the extra money and built some redundancy into my system. If you don't have your NVR raided in some way I really recommend you look into it. It saved me.

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