How to Recover Lost Videos from Dash Cam

Imagine, you are driving and unfortunately confront with a crazy road accident where another car tries to wrongly overtake you and hits your car causing major damage. You contact the police and share the car description but the police ask you for proof. In such a situation a dash cam recording could be an indisputable evidence for the police to take legal action. But what if you check the dash cam SD card and find the video missing!

How can you recover lost videos from a dash cam?

Car dash cams or dashboard cameras like Blackvue New DR650S-2CH and Thinkware f800 pro have become the necessity today with the spurt in the number of road accidents. The video recordings can be very helpful proof to resolve insurance fraud or prove your innocence in an accidental case. But losing such critical video footage can be distressing experience with all the agony involved in such cases. But before you panic, get relaxed and know that lost videos from dash cams are recoverable.

This post guides you to the best way to recover lost videos from a dash cam. But before that let’s understand how dash cams work to record videos while driving.

How does Dash Cam Works?

A dash cam is basically a video camera mounted on the dashboard or windscreen of the car. It continuously records the video through the windscreen while you are driving. Usually, it works with the help of car battery and automatically starts to record videos when the car ignition is turned on. Some dashboard cameras also have Parking Mode that allows them to record visuals when the car ignition is off. The parking mode is helpful in cases of vandalism and hit-and-run accidents when the vehicle is parked.

The video recordings are saved in the memory card. You can transfer the required video footage from the SD card to your computer. The recordings are generally of MP4, MOV, AVI, M4V, file formats that are played using any compatible video player on your system.

Why your Dash Cam Videos get Lost?

Since the dash cam recordings are continuously saved in SD cards, deletion or corruption of SD cards are very common. There can be many reasons to your lost dash cam videos, some of them are listed below:

• Improper handling of dash cam, like when you try to remove the SD card while the device is recording.
• Continue recording videos at low battery or when the storage media is running out of space.
• SD cards have a limited lifespan and over a period of time, they have gone corrupted.
• SD card is physically damaged
• You connected the SD card with the system having virus
• Bad blocks on SD card caused due to exceeding the limit of write/erase cycles
• Incompatible device drivers

How to Recover Lost Dash Cam Video Footage?

A trusted video recovery software such as Stellar Photo Recovery is the clear-cut solution to the lost video situation. You can also try out some manual fixes of the problem, however they do not guarantee the recovery.

Fix 1 – Use Video Recovery Software

The best way to recover lost video footages from the dash cam of your car is through the professional multimedia recovery software – Stellar Photo Recovery. This quick video recovery method saves your precious time from trying other hit and trial manual methods. It efficiently recovers Videos from damaged, corrupt, inaccessible memory cards, mini SD Cards, micro SD cards, SDHC and SDXC, used in dash cams.

The software supports all the video file formats including MOV, MP4, M4V, 3G2, 3GP and F4V from all types of dashboard cameras, be it TaoTronics, Goluk T1 FHD Dash Cam, Garmin Dash Cam 35 , Old Shark 1080p, KDLINKS DX2, Z-Edge Z3, Falcon F170, or Thinkware F800 Pro, Owl Dashcam, Tesla Dashcam etc.

Download and run the software, following the simple on-screen instructions. Connect your SD card to the PC. Its intuitive interface allows easy recovery of lost videos from dash cam in just 3 simple steps:

1. Launch Stellar Photo Recovery Software.
2. Select the location from where you want to recover. Click Scan to start the scanning process
3. A dialog box of ‘Scanning Completed Successfully!’ You can preview them in the right pane.
4. Click Recover. You can also choose to recover only the selective files – select videos that you need, right click, and click Recover.
5. In the dialog box, specify the location to save the image files. Click Save. All the files get saved at the specified location.

Stellar Photo Recovery is one of the safest applications that you can use without fearing permanent loss of video footages captured by dash cams.

Watch this video to know how to recover video footages from DashCam

Useful Manual methods to recover lost dash cam videos

Manual fixes to recover lost dash cam videos usually work when your computer does not recognize the dash cam SD card. To overcome the issue you can reinstall the driver or assign a new drive letter to the storage media. If the SD card asks for formatting, perform chkdsk to fix any corruption in the card. Remember, these methods do not ensure complete recovery of the lost dash cam videos. It can be only obtained through Stellar Photo Recovery Software.

Manual Fix 1: Reinstall the driver

To begin with, connect the SD card of your car dash cam to your computer. Reinstall the driver following the below steps:

• Go to This PC and right click on it. Click on Manage > Device Manager > Double-click Disk Drives
• Right click on your removable drive (here that of dash cam SD card)
• Click Uninstall > Ok
• Now disconnect your SD card and restart the computer
• Reconnect your SD card, the PC should detect the card now

Manual Fix 2: Assign a new drive letter

Connect the SD card of your car dash cam to your computer.

• Press Windows+R key to open the Run dialogue box
• Type msc and press Enter
• Under Storage select Disk Management
• Right-click the drive you want to assign a letter, on the right side
• Select Change Drive Letter and Paths
• Click on Change in the dialog box
• Check in Assign following drive letter
• Select the drive letter from the drop box
• Click OK. Close Computer Management

Manual Fix 3: Perform Chkdsk

You can apply this fix if errors like ‘SD card is damaged. Try reformatting it’ appear on connecting the dash cam memory card to the computer. To do Chkdsk follow the below steps:

• Go to Windows taskbar, click on Start, type cmd in the search box
• Right-click cmd and select Run as Administrator
• A command prompt appears, type chkdsk <dash cam SD card drive letter>:/f
• Press Enter

The Chkdsk checks and fixes the corrupt SD card. Now again open your SD card in the system to check if the videos are restored or not. Chkdsk only fixes the minor corruptions in the SD card. For severely corrupt videos, a comprehensive video repair solution is recommended to repair dash cam videos.

Important Tips to Protect Dash Cam Video Recordings after a Car Accident?

• Use the emergency lock feature that protects the recorded videos from overwriting after an accident strikes. Push the lock button to secure the video file and unplug the dash cam. Later transfer the video footage to your PC.
• Before removing the SD card from the device ensure your car is parked and the dash cam is turned off.
• Once you discover the problem in the memory card, immediately stop using it as overwriting would result in a permanent video loss situation.

Dash cam videos corrupted! Use Stellar Repair for Video .

Severely corrupt video files fail to repair through any manual methods. For such videos, you require the professional Stellar Repair for Video that easily repairs damaged dash cam videos having header corruptions, sound issues, compression or slider movement problems etc. The best part the software is that it saves you from any kind of technical struggle, as all the work is done by its advanced algorithms.

Conclusion

Accidents are inevitable even from best dash cams like Blackvue New DR650S-2CH and Thinkware f800 pro. It is better to manage your car dash cam videos sensibly than repent later. Always transfer the required videos to your computer, delete the ones not usable, and then reuse the SD card for further recordings. Still, if you happen to lose any of your important video required for the insurance claim or accidental case with police, recover lost videos from dash cam through trusted Stellar Photo Recovery.

Till then, follow safe driving!

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