How Can I Back Up An Entire Hard Drive from a DVR?

[bigcatbobcat 0]

I have a customer, well, a guy I sold something to that I won't sell to again, and he's upgrading his dvr from an 8Ch to a 16Ch. He won't pay for a new hard drive "Well, can't you take the one out of the 8 and put it in the 16?" Yeah, of course I can but the 16 is different from the 8 and all of your images will be lost when the 16 gets the hard drive out of the 8 it will re-format it. "Well, caynt (that's how he talks) caynt ewe just back it up fir me?"

 

It would take hours to back up each hour block for each channel and I don't want to do that and he won't do it. Is there a way to back up the entire hard drive? There are tons of back-up options for PC's of course, but I haven't found a good way to do it with a DVR.

 

As always, help is appreciated.

[Soundy 1]

Ummm, wait... he doesn't want to buy a new HDD for the new DVR... what is he expecting to back up the old HDD onto?

 

[bigcatbobcat 0]

This is a good question, I think his pc? Could you ever take a DVR hdd and hook it up to your pc and just import the files? I know my laptop has some SATA connection on it. In the words of a little guy on an airplane one time "How dis woooooorrrk?"

[Securame 0]

Ummm, wait... he doesn't want to buy a new HDD for the new DVR... what is he expecting to back up the old HDD onto?

 

Maybe he wants to back it up on VHS tapes...

[Securame 0]

He could probably plug the old HD and a new HD on a computer, an dlcone the drives. But then, that would be the same as just storing somewhere the old DVR with the old HD, and just buying a new HD for the new DVR...

 

All in all, wasted time and nothing gained.

[Soundy 1]

This is a good question, I think his pc? Could you ever take a DVR hdd and hook it up to your pc and just import the files?

That all depends. Most standalone DVRs are based on embedded Linux and would use the ext2 or ext3 filesystem (as opposed to Windows' FAT32 or NTFS), and your average Windows PC wouldn't be able to read the disk without some additional software anyway.

 

And IF you could actually access the disk, the files themselves may not be readable by the system.

 

And then IF you could actually back up the disk and files to later restore them to another HDD, they probably wouldn't be directly viewable by the PC.

 

And IF you had these files backed up, you'd still need to format another disk properly and transfer them back to that drive for the old to view them again.

 

And even IF you did that, as we've seen here, many cheaper DVRs, if you just remove and reinstall the drive, will no longer read that drive.

 

Keep in mind that whatever size that drive is, it'll probably be full and he'll need as much space on his PC to back it up to - if it's a 160GB drive, then he'll need 160GB of free space somewhere else to store it. A 160GB drive can be had for <$50.

 

Of course, this entire exercise assumes the old DVR uses a SATA hard drive, same as the new DVR... depending on how old it is, it may well be an IDE drive that you can't plug into the new DVR anyway.

 

Ultimately, he's probably not going to listen to any kind of logic or technological explanation of why it's not a good idea, so your best bet may be to simply look at the price of a suitable drive for the new DVR, then tell him it's going to cost 50% more than that to do the backup. Example: "Well, it's going to take me about 3 hours to do the backup, at $50/hr. Or, a new drive for your DVR is $100. Your choice."

 

Edit: or just tell him straight up that he's a f***ing moron and not to ever call you again.

 

Edit2: kinda like this: http://funehumor.com/fun_doc2/fun_0251.shtml

[bigcatbobcat 0]

this guy is bad, but not that bad. I would save that last quote for the nice little Korean lady we put a system for in a wig shop who has called 3-4 times complaining "we aint got ah no picture" I finally went out there to see what was up and her husband says "well, I come in here this morning like usual and hit the button to turn it on and it don't show no pictures" I said "Which button? Not the power button on the DVR?" "Yep, right there, that button." Sure enough, it was the DVR power and they turned it off every night when the last person went home. The "no picture" issue was the monitor not coming back from sleep mode. I checked their recordings and they're closed on Sundays and sure enough nothing recorded ever on a sunday. I said to him "You realize, if you turn it off when you go home at 6 and someone breaks in at 8, or even 6:05 for that matter, you don't have any pictures right?" "Well, we got them IR cameras right?" WHAT?! We put a big sticker on their DVR that said "DO NOT TOUCH." I wouldn't have minded except after I explained to him not to touch it, he explained, or said he explained to his wife and everyone else not to touch it, 2 days later "We ain't got ah no picture-ah" and I drove the 160 mile round trip and they didn't want to pay me for a service call eventhough I told them that if there was nothing wrong with the unit or it wasn't a warranty issue or whatever they'd have to pay and they agreed before I left. So we ended that conversation with "You know my other store? You do that one too, ok?" I said "Umm, we'll see." Depends on how desperate I am for business when our next appointment at the new store is.