Is the DVR hard drive encrypted and if so, can DVR Examiner still process it?
Hard drives in DVR surveillance systems will rarely be encrypted, but in the rare cases where we have found encrypted data, we have been able to process these drives with DVR Examiner. Your workflow does not change – remove the hard drive from the DVR, connect it to a computer in a forensically sound manner, and process the drive using DVR Examiner.
The hard drive that I am working with scans as “Support Pending” in DVR Examiner. What should I do now and how long will it take for support to be added?
Always let us know if you get a “Support Pending” screen by sending an email to services@dmeforensics.com. A critical factor in how we prioritize which filesystems are added to DVR Examiner is the number of people who request specific filesystems. The more people who request a filesystem, the sooner we begin working to add support.
It is always difficult to say how long it will be before support for a filesystem can be added to DVR Examiner. It depends on several factors such as the number of people requesting support, the complexity of the system, and the availability of the DVR to be purchased for testing. We may ask you to send us a copy of your data in the form of a forensic image – this often will aid us in implementing the system sooner. We also offer rush services through our Advanced Technical Services (ATS) department. This allows you to request expedited implementation for time-sensitive matters. For more information about your specific situation, please contact us so we can provide you options.
There’s more than one hard drive in my DVR, can DVR Examiner support it?
This is a bit of a tricky question. It all depends on how the data is organized on the hard drives. Rarely, you may encounter a situation where the indexes and data are stored on different drives. In this situation, DVR Examiner may not be able to detect or scan both drives successfully. If you encounter this situation, please let us know as we may be able to add support in a later release. Regarding RAID, despite what some DVR manuals may state, we rarely encounter non-enterprise DVRs that are truly in a RAID configuration. For more information, read this blog post.
Always feel free to contact us if you have any questions about your specific situation!
I have this make and model of DVR, can DVR Examiner process the hard drive?
This is probably the most common question we receive. The best way to see if your system is supported is to attempt to detect the hard drive using DVR Examiner. If you don’t yet have a license, you can get a free trial today.
There are probably tens of thousands of different makes and models of DVRs out there. Unfortunately, some systems don’t even identify themselves with such information. This makes it difficult to track exactly which systems are supported or not simply by the make/model. If you contact us, we can always check our list of known make and models of DVRs that we have come across and are supported in DVR Examiner, but just because we have not yet seen a specific make and model doesn’t mean it is not supported. This is why we always encourage you to attempt to detect the system. If it isn’t currently supported, please let us know so we can work on getting it supported in a future release.