NVR does not seem to recognise HDD

[bobokons]

I have the Amcrest NVR 8 CH 4K (no-poE) and I installed the WD purple 6TB in it. If I do a quick detect, it scans the HDD et al, but in the live view it still says no disk. As a result I can't record. I have taken out the disk and tried it on a synology server just to be sure its all good. It is. I have even attached it to my mac via a 3.5" USB case and its all good. I am not sure what is wrong. Contacted Amcrest and an agent told me to try and format it to fat32. Problem is formatting 6TB in Fat32 is almost impossible.

Please can anyone give me pointers. Is the NVR supposed to auto-format this when I install it?

[Revo2Maxx]

Hello and welcome to the Forum

What NVR do you have? What is the Max the Data sheet for NVR say it can take? Should be Specs that says 4tb or 6 tb and so on. Older ones may have smaller ability of HDD.... An idea is if it is setup to only take a 4tb is to Partition it to a 4tb drive leaving the extra empty as it may not detect a drive with 2 active ones.

[bobokons]

Hello Revomax,

Many thanks for your reply. I have the NV4108-HS 4K. it says supports upto 6TB.

Thanks.

[Revo2Maxx]

Hello sorry to hear and yes looking at the system you have it does say that it supports up to 6tb. How did you test the Drive in your Mac? Did you try using Disk Utility? is a drive diagnostics which can be used to test for defects or problems on a mac. It is located within the Utilities folder inside applications.

What I am thinking is that the Drive might have been used and formated in a format that the NVR don't understand. Might be Protected, could have something that maybe the Disk Utility might be able to help sort? However if not I would maybe contact WD and see if they have something that might be able to set back to factory. Sadly I am not sure about Fat32 seeing it is 32bit and only supports like 2tb or around that for most format software.

Have you used other HDD on the NVR? Does the NVR boot without the HDD without errors?

[bobokons]

Yes I have tried using Disk Utility to check and says disk is good. Does show it might be in NTFS format. I can't even format into Fat32 for the same 2TB limitation. I also checked with my Synology NAS and ran a test, also says disk is okay and uninitialized. The fat32 only came about because the Amcrest agent asked for this. I am not so convinced about this ask though and there is no information anywhere that refers to this. What I also can't confirm is if the NVR is supposed to auto-format a new HDD when you insert it or one is supposed to format it and if I need to, what file system does it expect?

[Revo2Maxx]

Sadly I am not 100% sure. I guess that will give me a task to do and take out one of my drives sadly I don't have any 6tb so mine may not be same. I am going to guess that NTFS should be ok. I do know the NVR/DVR are running a Unix or linux base core system GUI.

Here is some things to check.
One have you tired other HDD on system?
can system boot without errors with no HDD?
When you install HDD, No power connected, no cables connected nothing connected to NVR while taking off cover and installing HDD.... If you can ground your self before touching inside your NVR...
Install Sata Cable. Make sure you hear the CLICK
Install Power Cable.
Then without anything connected to the NVR besides the Monitor, mouse, and then Power cord.
Turn on power
Wait for system to come on line
go to Menu then HDD area for hdd Does it say there is one in there?
If it says there is one in there. Click the INT or Format or what ever your NVR has for the button to format the hdd.
Then it may tell you something or might wait for your input of OK don't ask some do some don't lol

Then the system might tell you that it needs to reboot. Let the system reboot.
ONce the system is back online go back to HDD area of the menu, check to see if there is HDD info like size and how much it has to record too?

[bobokons]

Thanks. I will check these steps. I thought of doing a linux/unix based format, but I could not tell which file system and sadly the online agents didn't come across as technical savvy.

[longedge]

My NVR is not an Amcrest so I don't have any first hand knowledge but this YT video https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... EVFIiOjaP4 seems pretty comprehensive and shows the menu "Format" option for HDD's which, I think, is your best way forward.

[Revo2Maxx]

Another thing I forgot to mention. You will want to make sure your using the Power supply that you got with the Amcrest NVR. One of the issues that can also happen and I found out a couple of years ago when my system failed to run right I thought it was failed drive. I installed new drive to find out it also failed. Come to find out that the PSU I was using at the time was failing and the 5amps that my system needed was only getting around 2.4. Installed old HDD back in. Installed PSU that came with my DVR and it worked well until this year when the HDD failed do to 2 many errors. It had over 40,000 hours of CCTV use and for my security HDD that was about its life expected.

While there are other Videos on youtube for HDD installs. The one I found off the link shows a system installing 3 1tb on a system that holds 4 drives. your NVR only holds 1 up to 6tb. Your System I think has a Normal HDD power that connects to the Main NVR board and the sata cable as well. In the Video that loaded off the link I followed has a normal PC type PSU so keep that in mind.

[bobokons]

Thank you so much. I will try this and definitely revert back.