DVR drive replacement
 

At my shop, the 8ch security DVR is reporting a drive failure.

Is the OS on units like this contained completely on the board, thus allowing me to just plug in another drive? Or does the drive need to have an operating system on it?

Depends on the drives.

I remember when I upgraded a Tivo drive, you had to use a special program outside of Windows. If you cloned the drive in Windows, it would do something to the partition table with extra info that would prevent it from working. This is about 10 years ago, but I would Google your particular model and see if there is any info out there, or call their support line.

I tried their support line first.
They said that model is no longer supported and I would have to buy a new system.

Many of these security DVRs are sold with no hard-drive installed, allowing the purchaser to install a drive themselves. This is why I was thinking it was simply a "plug and play" affair.

I've been reading over this site. Though it is a different brand, I am hoping my unit will be a similar job.
http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/DVR-Hard-Drive-Installation-s/218.htm

Say it ain't so!

Hard drives are pretty cheap... worth a try... and if it doesn't work you could add the drive a PC as a second drive.

Open it up, and you'll find out. I bet the drive in there is a run-o-the mill Best Buy SATA, depending on how old the system is.

The only thing that might be a little challenge is formatting it properly, if the machine won't format it for you.

It's a Seagate SATA/300, 1tb. Yep, not real expensive. Certainly cheaper than buying a whole new DVR system like the 'customer service' rep suggested.

Tivo drives had to be "blessed" "Bless" 'B' Drive And Expand Backup 'A' Drive - Getting The Most Out Of Your TiVo

Do a google search on your system by model number and see if it needs some kind of special program or procedure for changing the hard drive.