# Lorex H264 8CH DVR USB Backup problem



## poehere (Dec 14, 2012)

I am a Data Recovery Tech and have been given a Lorex H264 HDD to recover and pull the videos off the HDD. I have finally received the Lorex DVR to use to do this one with. I have read the manual on this device and indicates that the videos can be backed up by using the search function in the main menu window of the DVR. I have found the date for backup and the videos that need to be backed up for my client. I have inserted the USB key in the back of the DVR and selected the videos and then selected backup. Each time I receive an error that it is impossible to back up to this device. In the manual it says to format the USB device and I have done so but the device never appears in the HDD section of the main menu. I know it is not the USB port on the DVR I have tested the mouse in both top and bottom ports and seems to work fine in both ports. The key when inserted will be recognized for a second and blink but the device never shows there is a USB key attached to the unit.

How can a USB device be configured so that it is possible to backup the videos from this drive. Also the only way I can find to backup a video which is very long is through the client server on internet and download these to the computer. The videos are extremely large and this is taking a lot of time to download them. Once the video is downloaded the AVI convertor will not correctly convert these videos and also the Lorex player will not add them to the menu to view the downloaded videos. I need these videos from this device it is sort of urgent for a court case that they belong to. Any help would be appreciated.


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

Does it support USB sticks? Likely not. I suspect it will only recognize and function with an actual HDD.


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## poehere (Dec 14, 2012)

In the user manual this device will support USB sticks. It will not support a USB external drive attached to the USB port. There is 2 ports in the HDD menu one for the DVR direct attached SATA HDD and the second is for the configuration of tue USB Stick, pen drive or key what ever you wish to call this one. It is supported and will format the drive when asked to format the drive.

One of the major problems I am having in this DVR is the original client or owner of this machine did not register the machine, did not optain the DDNS for remote access and did not correctly configure all the ports on this. I find out that he has only recorded on ports 2,3, and 4. Most of the video footage is from port 4.

I see there is a way in the manual to export the footage to a PC HDD but the manual does not say how to configure this one. I also saw that it says that you have to arrive in archieves in order to dump your footage. Where in this device is archieves. all this manual indicates is that I am to go to search, find the date, footage, and view this one, go to backup, insert USB key and select the footage for backup to USB drive. When this is done the program starts backup but then fails with error and the USB drive is not recognized.


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## poehere (Dec 14, 2012)

*Lorex H264 8 CH DRV download problem*

As stated in my last post this DVR player will not download to the USB key. I have used the Internet to enter into the player direct. I have found the files in question that I need to download.

I can see at the end of the date I need there is a lot of 0.2 and 0.4M small segments videos. When downloaded they are blank. I can understand this one considering the person pulled this device when leaving in a hurry.

I have a 4.5M segment that I am downloading now. But problem is this it is taking over 4 days to download. On the screen the progress line is fulled but the video keeps downloading. I reached around 5,698KB when the blue bar was filled. But now I am at 24,698KB and still adding to the file as I write this one.

My question is how much is in a 4.5M file that will download to the computer and it is normal that once this blue bar is filled the download continues on for days on end.

I need this file for a client and it is very important to download it and get it off this machine. I think if I stop this download process now then the file will not be complete and I would have to start over again.

How much data is in a 4.5M file and how long would it take to download this file. The smaller segments seem to download but there is nothing at all on this footage.

Is there a faster way to dump these files to the PC so that the AVI convertor program can be used>

Thanks for all help


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

*Re: Lorex H264 8 CH DRV download problem*

Hi you have not said where your downloading the file from nor what you internet speed is and how your downloading


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

What is the error? 

Just a thought, but maybe the files selected exceed the size of the USB drive.


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

*Re: Lorex H264 8 CH DRV download problem*

Does the screen or User Manual explain what file information means? ie: 4.5M = what

It's obviously not 4.5MB. Next guess would be 4.5 minutes. File size will depend upon the audio/video type and codecs used. For example, an hour of HD video in a Tivo unit is over 7GB for an hour.


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## poehere (Dec 14, 2012)

The problem is this. No USB pen drives work on this device. They are not seen by the program as being connected. You can see in the menu for HDD that there is one and only one HDD connected to this device. There is no second port on this device to add another HDD to the machine. The only way to do this one is through the USB port on the back of the device. I can put on a USB cable with HDD on this and it can not see it at all. When I try to back up to this it say that USB Drive is not attached. I have to install a USB drive to this port. Then when I back up it will open the back up and try and backup the file but then closes saysing file error can not backup file to the device. All files on the HDD give the same error. This is not even possible at all considering the files are there when you enter into the HDD and search for the files. But the problem is when doing this you have to take the long way around this and download each file to the HDD on your computer. It is so much easier to just put a USB drive on this port and download to this.

The file size I tried to download was 236KB and I had on there a 10GB pen drive. I know the size of this file becasue I had to take the long way around and download this to my computer through the client software program. I need a faster way to download these larger files to my drive or to a hard disk on my system and Lorex is not supplying any help or answer to this one.

Why becasue I am a DR tech and I had to recover the HDD in question and reinstall it back into the device. The recovered drive is an exact clone of the original drive so there is no issues at all with the drive not working on this device.

There is a Client 10 software where I can use the LAN IP and enter into this device. From there I can use the search and find the month and date I need to back up but like I said to take one segment of the file takes forever to back up this way it is very long and time consuming when they offer a USB back up which does not work. I read more than one issue with this USB backup not working at all on this device.


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## poehere (Dec 14, 2012)

*Lorex LH110 ECO series DVR back up problems*

Lorex refuses to assist in the major problems this device has in backing up a video to USB or even to your system. Reason being I am a data recovery tech who had to recover the HDD on this device.

Major problems are as follows:

1. When searching for the video to back up the search is complete and the video segment located. The devie LH110 ECO series support USB back up. select segment to backup, insert USB key in USB slot at back of device and click on Back up. The program goes to the backup process, in the panel it indicates to not remove the USB key during this process, then the program gives error message that could not backup video segment file error. This happens on all the videos on the HDD. There is not one video on this deive that it can back up

2. The second backup process is by using client 10 software and using the router to locate the device. From here you can downlooad the file to the HDD. Problem in this method process is very long and most of the time will block or never end the download process.

3. If the video is backup the AVIgenerator program supplied with the disk will not work gives errors. Found a new AVI generator program that will convert the RAW 264 video stream to AVI. Now once converted this will never play on any device what so ever. Normally it can be seen using VLC player but in this case there is some headers or files missing from the backup that will not allow it to be viewed in the VLC player

Here is what I need. I need a way to take this device and use a PC to try and backup the video files I only need 3 files backed up to the HDD without having to spend 10 days to take a 15min segment that is marked as 77.8M. Is there another way to backup these files to another disk. The normal backup files will not beackup to the USB device attached to the machine.

The only program that can interface with this LH110 Eco series DVR player is Lorex Client 10. Lorex Client 11 and 12 are not supported on the ECO series players.

This drive contains no MBR or partition table information and it is not possible to mount this drive on another PC and download the contents of this to another disk. The only way to recover the stored video segments on this drive is to mount the recovered drive back to the DVR and download the segments or backup the segments to a USB key which is impossible.

I feel the backup to USB problems comes from the hard drive clone and also not being the original device this drive was inserted into. The machine i am using is the exact same device used to record this disk but the clients device is broken so I am using a new device borrowed to view the videos on this disk. I can see all videos on this disk but it is impossible to view them, once downloaded to see the contents using the Lorex 11 player or even convert to AVI to view them using another media player. Any other suggestions on how to back up this device so that I can view 2 of the video segments. Thanks for all your help in this on.


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

I don't have anything else to add to help. I just wanted to state that the files don't sound valid. Unless I'm missing something, we are talking above captured video streams. And based on the specs they can be up to a resolution of 640x480. Even with h264 compression, a file that size wouldn't be very long. Most camera DVR devices allow the user to set a max file size for each file (usually in MB's). So, for example, the setup is for 100MB files, when you browse the HDD, you would see a list of files with some odd name (usually based on date/time) and they would all be 100MB except for the file that was being recorded when the unit was stopped or powered off.

Have you tested the file you moved to your PC?


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

multiple topics have been merged as they are all for the same issue.

And you have answered my question. The files don't play properly, which leads me to believe they have been corrupted in some way. So while you may have maintained the data integrity from drive to drive, it's likely corrupted.


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## poehere (Dec 14, 2012)

*Re: Lorex H264 8 CH DRV download problem*



joeten said:


> Hi you have not said where your downloading the file from nor what you internet speed is and how your downloading


This is not downloaded from Internet. The DVR is connected to the Router and has an ip address associated with the router such as 192.168.x.x

There is a clinet software that interfaces with the device. In the client software there is two choice to enter to the DVR one is by Intenet using the configured DDNS from Lorex or the second is by LAN using the IP address of the device.

I do not have the DDNS becasue the owner of this device never obtained one from Lorex. So I have to use the LAN and download direct over network connection. So I have one computer connected to the network and the DVR connected to the network and all I do is use the local LAN to enter to the device.

There is a second way to enter to the device therough the Intenet using HTTP but this oen is very long and ties up the network and nothing else can be done when trying to download using the HTTP. It is a lot quicker to use the local LAN to download this file to the computer.

I hope this explain better how this is connected and how I am download the file to my system from.


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## poehere (Dec 14, 2012)

Dogg said:


> multiple topics have been merged as they are all for the same issue.
> 
> And you have answered my question. The files don't play properly, which leads me to believe they have been corrupted in some way. So while you may have maintained the data integrity from drive to drive, it's likely corrupted.


Thank you for this answer. I have mounted one of the small segments on Winhex and found this one was not actually recorded to the HDD from the cameras. I found in this that when the person who was trying to view these files used the Lorex menu with a screen attached to the DVR he recorded on the back of the disk. Which mean that in viewing a file direct from the DVR it will only show the last 1 min of the file. When he did this one he never turned off record. So he was trying to view and record at the same time whcih was not possible due to the fact there is no cameras attached to this drive any longer.

I have pulled the Hard drive one more time and tried to find one segment of the files he did not corrupt when he was viewing these files. I have found this one. I am trying now to download this segment to see what the quality of the video will be. I will update this when I find out after the download has finished. Each file is recorded in 15 min segments and the file size of all files for these segments seems to be around 77.x M. 

thanks for the help I will update this one again.

I was just wondering if anyone has ever taken this hard drive and this device and forced it to download the files to another hard drive attached to the PC. I think at one time in research I saw something or some way to do this one. Thanks for all the help


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

In most instances, you can't connect HDDs from these type of devices to a PC as they often use a file structure not supported by Windows. It simply depends on how the HDD is formatted. If it's FAT or NTFS, you can connect it and simply copy the files off. But it's most likely not.


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