For many reasons, you may lose your CCTV footage or videos. Imagine that something happened on your property/establishment and the footage from your CCTV surveillance system is damaged or not accessible.
You may have gotten the best home security system, the best DVR/NVR, however, technology may have its glitches. It cannot be avoided that devices and equipment might malfunction at times.
This is the reason why reputable companies have warranties and technical support that go with their products.
What causes video loss in security systems?
There are several reasons why video loss occurs. Usually, the main reason is software or hardware related. In certain instances, the stored recordings may be corrupted or somehow damaged and you’re not able to play them.
The hard drive goes bad and the footage is gone. It’s always recommended to keep your CCTV system and IP cameras updated to the latest firmware. At the same time, you need to check them periodically, such as the power supply or the hard drives themselves. Make it a routine check.
CCTV security video loss may also be caused by issues related to power supply, wiring, and internet connectivity. A bad power source may short-circuit the hard drives and permanently damage them.
They’re also the human factor. In many cases, videos are accidentally erased or hard drives formatted by mistake.
How to recover lost CCTV surveillance videos?
If you lost CCTV footage, there are a few methods that you can try to recover the lost videos from a security system. They may be complicated, however, it’s worth giving a shot if the footage is too important yo you.
Restoring videos from the backup
If your CCTV security system is recording in the cloud you can restore video from the backup. Recording in the cloud comes with a lot of perks, such as you”ll not encounter the problem of accidental deletion or hard drives going bad.
Cloud storage allows for easy access to your CCTV security camera videos regardless of where you’re located when you try to access them. This method won’t work if you didn’t save any backup files in the first place or if you’re not using cloud storage. Check out the next methods below.
Use Recovery Software to get back lost CCTV videos
Stellar Photo Recovery
The Stellar Photo Recovery software can help you recover these lost CCTV videos. This software can recover photos and video files lost due to accidental deletion, corruption, or formatting of internal or external hard drives or SD memory cards.
Here are the steps to recover your files:
- Install the recorder’s hard drive in the computer and you a hard drive reader.
- Launch Stellar Photo Recovery software.
- On the home screen menu of the software ‘Select What to Recover.’
- The next step is to select the location from where you want to recover (you have to select the recorder’s hard drive). Click Scan to start the scanning process.
- When the scanning process is done you’ll see the dialog box of ‘Scanning Completed Successfully!’ displaying the scan results such as the number of files found and the size of the data. You can browse and preview the recovered data and see if there’s something of value. If you do not see the videos you need on the list, select the Deep Scan option found at the bottom to do a deeper scanning on the hard drive.
- Select videos that you need, right-click, and click Recover.
- Specify the location of where you want to save the videos then click Save.
Minitool Power Data Recovery
MiniTool Photo Recovery and MiniTool Power Data Recovery are powerful recovery tools that can recover lost and deleted data from hard drives, USB drives, and nearly every kind of disk or directory that can hold (and lose) data.
If you lost CCTV surveillance videos, you can try to recover them by using this software. Take out the hard drive from your DVR or NVR and install it on your computer’s motherboard. Install the Minitool recovery software on the computer and go through the steps.
Here are the steps on how to use the Minitool Photo Recovery Program:
- Install (or connect) the hard drive or microSD card to the computer and then run the software. Note: You may need a hard driver reader in order to connect it to your computer.
- Select the Target Drive (which is your CCTV hard drive) and click Scan to start the process.
- Check out “Your Wanted Videos to Recover” list.
- If there’s something valuable, save the selected videos to the specified path.
What to do if you notice Video Loss in your CCTV system?
There are several things you do when you detect footage loss in your security system. Check out the power connections and make sure nothing is loose.
Inspect the cables going to and from the recorder, and investigate the hard drive cables and connections inside your recorder. Then re-launch the cameras and software and see if the videos are getting recorded.
Try out different ports at the back of the DVR or NVR. In many cases, certain ports go bad over time and there’ll be no live feed. Connect the camera to another port that works and check if you see any pictures. Or maybe the camera itself is bad.
Check whether the security camera is getting powered on properly, sometimes the connections are loose or the power supply is not providing enough juice for all the cameras. Another aspect you need to keep in mind is the length of the cabling, if the run is too long, you may have bad image quality or complete video loss.
If you’re using an NVR, check out the PoE switch and the router. There are instances when the PoE switch is not able to provide enough power for all the cameras.
See whether the infrared (IR) LEDs on the security camera are on. Update firmware regularly. This article has more information regarding video loss in security systems and offers tips on how to fix them.
