Need help recovering or fixing files pulled from a Comcast DVR.

[Phil C]

OK, to make a long story short, my brother and law asked me for help recovering his sons high school football games and local news interviews that he had saved on his DVR. Problem was that he had just updated his account to the new X1 stuff and Comcast went ahead and wiped his old DVR without telling him they were going to do so. He called and raised hell and someone on the line told him that those files were not actually "deleted" and would only really delete if the drive needed the space for new recording and it was possible to recover his content. Now with the DVR box "cleared" I could not play through the box and capture through the fire-wire port that seems to be how most folks save stuff off a DVR. I had to pull the drive out of the box and use this software called EaseUS to get what data was on there. In the end i was able to recover about "43 .mpg files" among some other junk. Thing is, they WILL NOT PLAY... in any software. VLC, Media Player, etc. All no go. Anyone know what i can do about this? He is heartbroken that he has lost this stuff and any help would be appreciated. I had even tried a couple of conversion tools to try to convert in to a different file type and then maybe i would play but that didn't work either. I will try to give screenshots of what i was able to recover.



I should also note that there is about 28 files in the "Gzip" folder that will not unzip with any program.
There is a crazy 5+GB Word file in the one folder that is too big to open.
Also one Shockwave file .swf in the last folder that won't open with anything i have either, weird stuff.

Thanks all for looking!

[JVRaines]

Can you run MediaInfo on one or more of the MPG files and post the result here?

[Phil C]

Absolutely I can... But which "View" do you want? They don't tell ya much. Just picked a random file out of the .mpg folder


XML View???


Largest File Recovered

I'm not sure if this is what you wanted...

[KarMa]

I really like the results I get with PhotoRec. I deleted a bunch of video files a few years ago on a severely fragmented drive. I managed to save most of the videos. Although some of the saved videos did have errors but they were still playable.


http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step

[JVRaines]

Your result indicates that MediaInfo doesn't recognize them as media files and that they are corrupt. I found the following advice from EaseUS. Have you tried this method?

Please run our product again, choose 'Complete Recovery', select the partition or device which you want to recover from, choose the "Option" above and uncheck all the items in the "FAT 12/16/32","NTFS","Common" page, and keep the default setting in "RAW" page, then click "OK" to ensure it, program will return to device list page. Click "Next" to continue. After the "Intelligent Searching", there will be one or more partitions; you can choose the highest suggestion partition. If it doesn't work, please choose more partitions (max 4) at the same time to recover.

After the scan is finished, there will be the files list; you can use "Find file by name" and "Search files" to filter the found files, so that you can save your desired files. You can filter the files by their file name/size/type/date, etc. (for example, you can type *.doc to find all the .doc files through "Search files" function)

After searching, select a file, click "File Preview"; unless file is corrupt, you can view it before recovery. (.doc, .xls, .docx, .xlsx, .txt, .jpg, .bmp, etc. can be supported to preview).

[Phil C]

What did you use to recover these files?

EaseUS, it's a partition and data recovery tool. The drive just plugged in to my pc showed under the dskmgr as "unallocated". I had to use this to get the files, and that's what it gave me. First time ever trying to do this stuff.

[Phil C]

Your result indicates that MediaInfo doesn't recognize them as media files and that they are corrupt. I found the following advice from EaseUS. Have you tried this method?

Please run our product again, choose 'Complete Recovery', select the partition or device which you want to recover from, choose the "Option" above and uncheck all the items in the "FAT 12/16/32","NTFS","Common" page, and keep the default setting in "RAW" page, then click "OK" to ensure it, program will return to device list page. Click "Next" to continue. After the "Intelligent Searching", there will be one or more partitions; you can choose the highest suggestion partition. If it doesn't work, please choose more partitions (max 4) at the same time to recover.

After the scan is finished, there will be the files list; you can use "Find file by name" and "Search files" to filter the found files, so that you can save your desired files. You can filter the files by their file name/size/type/date, etc. (for example, you can type *.doc to find all the .doc files through "Search files" function)

After searching, select a file, click "File Preview"; unless file is corrupt, you can view it before recovery. (.doc, .xls, .docx, .xlsx, .txt, .jpg, .bmp, etc. can be supported to preview).

OK, I'm gonna give it another try i guess, Thanks for your time! I hadn't tried it like that. It's gonna be tomorrow before I'll know if it worked, it takes quite a while to do the scan! Thanks a million though, I'm in WAY over my head.

[JVRaines]

Hope you have some good luck! Even if you recover the whole files, you may run into encryption. If the file is recovered intact, MediaInfo will give more detailed results and should tell you if the program streams are encrypted.

[Cornucopia]

It's a multipart problem:
1. The drive has been reformatted/unformatted/unpartitioned.
2. The drive WAS encrypted. All Comcast drives I've ever read about have been.

Part 2 is not a problem if you could play them again direct from the original box (either just to watch or to cap via analog). Out of its original surroundings, however, it won't give you ANYTHING usable.

Unfortunately you cannot use standard tools to recover the partition & directory unless the tool explicitly supports the partitioning scheme/file system of the original setup (otherwise it would overwrite data-BAD). And CC won't let you know that info, cuz they don't want consumers to have that kind of info for fear that it would help someone somewhere defeat their encryption.

So I think your best bet is to raise some more hell and make them remotely recover the partition themselves with their own tools (either over the connection, or coming in person, or having you walk it in to their shop - though don't let it out of your sight!).

Barring that, I think you are SOL.

I dunno, maybe a friend who is also a parent for a kid on the same team also happened to record those same clips. Or check with the TV stations or the school to get backup copies...

Scott

[Phil C]

Your result indicates that MediaInfo doesn't recognize them as media files and that they are corrupt. I found the following advice from EaseUS. Have you tried this method?

Please run our product again, choose 'Complete Recovery', select the partition or device which you want to recover from, choose the "Option" above and uncheck all the items in the "FAT 12/16/32","NTFS","Common" page, and keep the default setting in "RAW" page, then click "OK" to ensure it, program will return to device list page. Click "Next" to continue. After the "Intelligent Searching", there will be one or more partitions; you can choose the highest suggestion partition. If it doesn't work, please choose more partitions (max 4) at the same time to recover.

After the scan is finished, there will be the files list; you can use "Find file by name" and "Search files" to filter the found files, so that you can save your desired files. You can filter the files by their file name/size/type/date, etc. (for example, you can type *.doc to find all the .doc files through "Search files" function)

After searching, select a file, click "File Preview"; unless file is corrupt, you can view it before recovery. (.doc, .xls, .docx, .xlsx, .txt, .jpg, .bmp, etc. can be supported to preview).

OK, I'm gonna give it another try i guess, Thanks for your time! I hadn't tried it like that. It's gonna be tomorrow before I'll know if it worked, it takes quite a while to do the scan! Thanks a million though, I'm in WAY over my head.

Ok, i just went to try this and i just don't see those options for me... There are only 3 pages to the program and then it doing it's thing, not much to mess with.

Page 1


Page 2


Scanning Away on 3rd page.

[Phil C]

It's a multipart problem:
1. The drive has been reformatted/unformatted/unpartitioned.
2. The drive WAS encrypted. All Comcast drives I've ever read about have been.

Part 2 is not a problem if you could play them again direct from the original box (either just to watch or to cap via analog). Out of its original surroundings, however, it won't give you ANYTHING usable.

Unfortunately you cannot use standard tools to recover the partition & directory unless the tool explicitly supports the partitioning scheme/file system of the original setup (otherwise it would overwrite data-BAD). And CC won't let you know that info, cuz they don't want consumers to have that kind of info for fear that it would help someone somewhere defeat their encryption.

So I think your best bet is to raise some more hell and make them remotely recover the partition themselves with their own tools (either over the connection, or coming in person, or having you walk it in to their shop - though don't let it out of your sight!).

Barring that, I think you are SOL.

I dunno, maybe a friend who is also a parent for a kid on the same team also happened to record those same clips. Or check with the TV stations or the school to get backup copies...

Scott

Yeah man, this is the biggest pain in the ass ever, note to self though and all those reading... If you're with Comcast or any other cable provider, make sure you have what you need out of the dvr before you even think about upgrading or replacing boxes, they will screw ya. I feel bad for the guy i'm trying to help here because it was just some pretty special stuff on there form his kids football activities and i'm sure it would be nearly impossible to remember what all he had on there to try to track down by other means, some maybe though.

And that whole problem 2 thing... Yeah, where they wiped it already, it's impossible to to access through the box. The guy may be on his own dealing directly with Comcast on this. I'm not sure what else to do, i assume it's the encryption that is keeping me from playing the files, correct?

[Phil C]

So i wonder though, is there any way to restore the drive partitions and files on the drive through the pc and file recovery software then stick the drive back in the dvr box so one could recover the videos through fire-wire or another more tradition means... That way may you could beat the encrytion, or whatever.

[smrpix]

So i wonder though, is there any way to restore the drive partitions and files on the drive through the pc and file recovery software then stick the drive back in the dvr box so one could recover the videos through fire-wire or another more tradition means... That way may you could beat the encrytion, or whatever.

No. If it were possible you would find instructions all over the internet.

[Hoser Rob]

DVR encryption (not just theirs) is proprietary and they do not release the source code. If there is anyone out there who could figure out how to do it you wouldn't be able to afford them. That's a fairly common question here and the answer is no.

[Phil C]

DVR encryption (not just theirs) is proprietary and they do not release the source code. If there is anyone out there who could figure out how to do it you wouldn't be able to afford them. That's a fairly common question here and the answer is no.

Well this just sucks, why they have to make it impossible to keep what is really just mostly local news clips is just beyond me, and everyone else it seems. Appreciate the help anyway everyone!