Hi all Guru's.
As the harddrives are spread to other mediastuff then just computers, I thought this could be a interesting topic.
The harddrives is now found in videocameras, satelliteboxes, hdd-dvd recorders, and so on.
This is what I have found out, if you have any more info please add!

I think the filesystem in a hdd-videocamera is Fat 32 and use just plain Mpeg.
And for Satelliteboxes they also use Fat 32, but as they use a image streaming system (they do a image of the broadcaststeam, with multisubs and tv-text..if in use) there are different variables of a system called .HAV

But for hdd-dvd recorders I have not been able to find any solution, if you hook up a drive from one of those in a computer it only shows up as an not initialized with 0mb.....Anyone know how to recover data from those?

I got a client in with a faulty JVC DR-MH30 hdd-dvd recorder, with lots of data on it.
As I couldn't read out the data, the only thing was to fix the fault on the recorder it self...which went well in this case... But for other drives I might not be so lucky!

Best Regards

Bosse

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Hi Boss,
My idea would be to ignore the partition information and try for a raw type file signature recovery. It will search the whole disk for file header information and is successful in some cases. You may need to add your own signatures though.

_________________
regards

John - http://www.dq-int.co.uk

If the films you need are stored in the mac DV format, there is no commercially available software to recover these.
I wrote my own program for that.
It could not be done by just adding a signature.

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

Hi,
I know that Fujitsu designed the HDD system on the earlier Hdd recorders and the gui is pretty similar on this JVC modell, so if anyone has any information at all on that, I'll be glad

Dataq: I will also test it that way, and I keep you posted on the progress.

Dobre: I don't think it's in that format, but if you're willing to share I could give it a try.

Regards/ Bosse

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Nine year old thread - so optimistic reply! Here goes:

We have a HDD in from a JVC DR-MH30S. Seagate HDD, badly degraded. Possible to get a decent disk image in Pc3000/Deepspar. It appears that the JVC DR-MH30S has failed also, producing a well known "loading" error when plugged in, so loading a working cloned HDD into the DVR does not help matters. The filesystem looks proprietary. No obvious way to rebuild it. RAW recovery gets video files with distorted playback. UFS makes the best job of it, DE raw/GERP breaks the files into lots of small parts.

Anyone with any experience on this FS?

At sector 4 there is the following hex output:


Offset 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

000000800 41 F5 CB FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 2B AõËÿ +
000000810 43 56 65 72 73 69 6F 6E 65 64 41 42 53 00 00 00 CVersionedABS
000000820 43 6F 70 79 72 69 67 68 74 20 4C 53 49 20 4C 6F Copyright LSI Lo
000000830 67 69 63 2C 20 49 6E 63 2E 20 32 30 30 34 00 gic, Inc. 2004


At sector 0:

Offset 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

000000000 33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C FB 50 07 50 1F FC BE 1B 7C 3ÀŽÐ¼ |ûP P ü¾ |
000000010 BF 1B 06 50 57 B9 E5 01 F3 A4 CB BD BE 07 B1 04 ¿ PW¹å ó¤Ë½¾ ±
000000020 38 6E 00 7C 09 75 13 83 C5 10 E2 F4 CD 18 8B F5 8n | u ƒÅ âôÍ ‹õ
000000030 83 C6 10 49 74 19 38 2C 74 F6 A0 B5 07 B4 07 8B ƒÆ It 8,tö µ ´ ‹
000000040 F0 AC 3C 00 74 FC BB 07 00 B4 0E CD 10 EB F2 88 ð¬< tü» ´ Í ëòˆ
000000050 4E 10 E8 46 00 73 2A FE 46 10 80 7E 04 0B 74 0B N èF s*þF €~ t
000000060 80 7E 04 0C 74 05 A0 B6 07 75 D2 80 46 02 06 83 €~ t  ¶ uÒ€F ƒ
000000070 46 08 06 83 56 0A 00 E8 21 00 73 05 A0 B6 07 EB F ƒV è! s  ¶ ë
000000080 BC 81 3E FE 7D 55 AA 74 0B 80 7E 10 00 74 C8 A0 ¼ >þ}Uªt €~ tÈ 
000000090 B7 07 EB A9 8B FC 1E 57 8B F5 CB BF 05 00 8A 56 · ë©‹ü W‹õË¿ ŠV
0000000A0 00 B4 08 CD 13 72 23 8A C1 24 3F 98 8A DE 8A FC ´ Í r#ŠÁ$?˜ŠÞŠü
0000000B0 43 F7 E3 8B D1 86 D6 B1 06 D2 EE 42 F7 E2 39 56 C÷ã‹Ñ†Ö± ÒîB÷â9V
0000000C0 0A 77 23 72 05 39 46 08 73 1C B8 01 02 BB 00 7C w#r 9F s ¸ » |
0000000D0 8B 4E 02 8B 56 00 CD 13 73 51 4F 74 4E 32 E4 8A ‹N ‹V Í sQOtN2äŠ
0000000E0 56 00 CD 13 EB E4 8A 56 00 60 BB AA 55 B4 41 CD V Í ëäŠV `»ªU´AÍ
0000000F0 13 72 36 81 FB 55 AA 75 30 F6 C1 01 74 2B 61 60 r6 ûUªu0öÁ t+a`
000000100 6A 00 6A 00 FF 76 0A FF 76 08 6A 00 68 00 7C 6A j j ÿv ÿv j h |j
000000110 01 6A 10 B4 42 8B F4 CD 13 61 61 73 0E 4F 74 0B j ´B‹ôÍ aas Ot
000000120 32 E4 8A 56 00 CD 13 EB D6 61 F9 C3 49 6E 76 61 2äŠV Í ëÖaùÃInva
000000130 6C 69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69 74 69 6F 6E 20 74 61 lid partition ta
000000140 62 6C 65 00 45 72 72 6F 72 20 6C 6F 61 64 69 6E ble Error loadin
000000150 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 g operating syst
000000160 65 6D 00 4D 69 73 73 69 6E 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 em Missing opera
000000170 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6D 00 00 00 00 00 ting system
000000180 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000000190 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000001A0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000001B0 00 00 00 00 00 2C 44 63 69 22 CE 41 00 00 00 00 ,Dci"ÎA
0000001C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000001D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000001E0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000001F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 BB U»


Before any comments, "BB" is purposeful - content taken from disk image with MBR deactivated.

Best regards,
John

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

I would buy working device and use drive in it.

Unfortunately this model of DVR has become quite rare (certainly no obvious spots on eBay).

I can separate the audio stream from the video files to get fully working audio (previously defects during normal video + audio playback), but video is still bad.

I'll keep an eye open for matching DVR...

There are some info in internet how to recover those recorders. May be you can repaired it.

The service manual and schematics are here:

http://elektrotanya.com/?q=showresult&what=DR-MH30S&kategoria=&kat2=schematics

I suggest you outsource the repair to a competent AV repairer. I suspect that you will need to find an older tech -- today's techs just seem to replace boards. Otherwise join the badcaps.net forum. Despite its name, many experienced techs hang out there.

BTW, I have a working DVR recorder with the same processor (LSI Logic Domino DMN8652):
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/DVD/TDR250HD/



The expired URLs can be found at the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110607040813/http://jeroent.com/salora/?cat=4
http://web.archive.org/web/20110913144014/http://jeroent.com/salora/?cat=6

BTW, I suspect that the MBR (Windows XP/2000) may not be original. It could be that the customer initialised the drive under Windows Disk Management. Perhaps restoring sector 0 to its original condition is all that is required?

The "loading" error could be due to a bad optical drive, although it's most likely due to the HDD. In my case I was able to replace the burner with a regular LG IDE DVD burner. If the interface cable is the flexible type rather than the usual ribbon cable, there are adapters (which I have) which can be scavenged from old recorders (eg Panasonic, LG).

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

ISTR that, on my Aldi/Tevion DVDR, the file system is laid down in reverse, ie it begins at max LBA and builds towards sector 0. I'll have to check my own HDD, though.

Also, ISTR that a new drive (of larger capacity) was automatically formatted by my DVDR.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Is the clone HDD larger than the patient? If so, then perhaps it would be advisable to cut its capacity with a HPA, especially if the file system begins at max LBA.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I have been reading about this model of DVR and the typical failure. The 'loading' failure is often due to failed capacitors on the mainboard. I have tried disconnecting the optical drive, no difference. The cable used between the IDE connections and the main board is a proprietary size. Obtaining a replacement cable will only be possible by obtaining a matching DVR. Of which this model of DVR is not going to be obtained easily, if at all. I do know a good AV repairer, he mainly deals with Sky DVRs and TVs, but the work he has been able to help with previously was to perform some BGA chip swaps on 1.8" Tosh PCBs when the PCB has failed. He did so at a very reasonable cost. I know one or two other DR companies use him too.

The cloned HDD was created in DeepSpar and then a second clone of that was created on a HDD with the LBA capacity to avoid any problems. About 100 sectors from the 160GB HDD have not been read.

The 'loading' error on the DVR occurs regardless of whether the HDD is plugged in or not. From what I can tell the DVR is not attempting to read any data from the HDD and so I expect the DVR is at fault itself. There is not visual output from the DVR from any scart/composite, not even a test or boot screen. I think it will be necessary to get the DVR repaired, as little chance of finding a working match.

J.

If you had replied earlier, I would have had a spare IDE drive to test in my Tevion DVD-R. I'm not certain just how similar the file system is, though.

FWIW, I have attached dumps of sector 0 and the first section of the directory.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Nice to see old post get new life
John, in my case it was capacitors...some swollen some dry'ed out, just changed them and all loaded ok.
Back then I had a problem to find the right value as they were non standard....should go better these days.

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

If you upload a photo of the cable, and provide some dimensions, I can compare it against those in my cable collection. As I stated previously, the cable may be similar to those used in LG and Panasonic DVDRs.

BTW, sector 0 has been overwritten by your client, so you will need to restore it.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I would recommend an ESR meter. Many electrolytics, especially the smaller ones, don't give any visual clues.

This one is very popular with techs:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bobpar/esrmeter.htm

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Given that it looks as if the original MBR has been overwritten I shall try dealing with that first. Thanks for the sample hex. I'll also check to see if the DVR will auto format a new HDD when that is used. I'll update when done.

Thanks,
J

We use DVR examiner http://dmeforensics.com/ works great with just about any DVR.

Normal data recovery sofware eg. R-Studio, Reclaime, UFS Explorer etc will not understand these proprietary file systems DVR's use.

_________________
Web: https://www.day1data.de

After quite some looking a matching DVR was found at reasonable cost and it did the trick. The original DVR was faulty (loading error). As Fzabkar correctly pointed out sector 0 was incorrect. I used sector 0 from the HDD which was in the working unit.

For reference should anyone else require it I have attached it below.

Thanks for the help - job done!

John

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/