C20X / C50X Series: DVR Playback Issues

Similar Issues

• System is not recording
• Hard drive is not formatted
• Hard drive is not detected
• Hard drive is full
• Playbacks cannot be found
• PIR Systems is recording not important events

Note: DVR recordings are saved in the Hard Drive of your DVR. The first thing you must check is if the Hard Drive is working properly.

Troubleshooting Steps 

1. Pre-Installed HDD
Verify your system specs if your DVR has a pre-installed Hard Drive. Some models are sold with no Hard Drive installed and customers must install it. For help installing the HDD, visit Installing or Upgrading the HDD

2. Hard Drive Status
If your DVR has a pre-installed Hard Drive, please check if it has been detected, is formatted and still has free space to save recordings. 
To check the HDD Status, please refer to C20X / C50X Series: Hard Drive Issues

3. Playbacks Time
If you have already checked that your Hard Drive is working fine, but you are still having problems finding recordings, you may be having issues with the Playback Time.

For example, if you are pretty sure that an event (ex: motion detection) has occurred at a specific time but when searching this time, there is nothing recorded in your DVR. For this case, the problem could be that the DVR date and time is different or is not synchronized with the local time. This can cause the Playback time to be different than the time selected on the DVR recording search. 
To learn how to solve this issue, please go to  C20X / C50X Series: Date and Time Issues

Another problem with playback time occurs when you try to find old recordings if the date you are looking for is before the oldest date on recordings. If this occurs, the DVR will indicate that to continue recording new events, the file you are looking for has been overwritten.