Watch out for Blackvue Viewer uncommanded erasure of data!!!

[Pruitt]

I've been having problems with my Blackvue 2 channel dashcam. I recently downloaded viewer 1.16 from their website, and formatted the SD card. INSTEAD OF FORMATTING THE MICRO SD CARD (which it said it was doing), THEIR GARBAGE SOFTWARE FORMATTED AN IRREPLACEABLE FLASH DRIVE THAT WAS IN A DIFFERENT USB SLOT!

THANKS TO THEIR INCOMPETENT PROGRAMMERS, I HAVE NOW LOST A LOT OF IRREPLACEABLE PERSONAL FINANCIAL DATA, PHOTOS OF MY LATE WIFE, AND A GREAT DEAL OF OTHER STUFF!

Be very careful using Blackvue software - it not only appears to damage parts of their own hardware, but it will delete unrelated data from flash drives when it is telling you it is working on the dashcam card!!

 

[Az_Rael]

Yikes! Thanks for the warning. I always format the card using the camera - glad I have been doing it that way now.

 

[mongo]

I've been having problems with my Blackvue 2 channel dashcam. I recently downloaded viewer 1.16 from their website, and formatted the SD card. INSTEAD OF FORMATTING THE MICRO SD CARD (which it said it was doing), THEIR GARBAGE SOFTWARE FORMATTED AN IRREPLACEABLE FLASH DRIVE THAT WAS IN A DIFFERENT USB SLOT!

THANKS TO THEIR INCOMPETENT PROGRAMMERS, I HAVE NOW LOST A LOT OF IRREPLACEABLE PERSONAL FINANCIAL DATA, PHOTOS OF MY LATE WIFE, AND A GREAT DEAL OF OTHER STUFF!

Be very careful using Blackvue software - it not only appears to damage parts of their own hardware, but it will delete unrelated data from flash drives when it is telling you it is working on the dashcam card!!

I am so sorry.
Depending on the type of erasure/ format it did, the data may be recoverable (apologies if you already tried that).

 

[powerfactor]

If it performed a "quick format" you should be able to recover the data.

 

[Chips]

Hoping/praying maybe it was backed up to the cloud or other network storage place you can recover it from?

 

[Pruitt]

It turns out I did transfer a slightly older copy (couple days older) to my hard drive a few days before. Very few modified / new files were completely lost.

Checking 3rd party software, I've found a package that will recover about 95% of the data. Free ones will get about 2/3 of that.

Here's what the Format dialog within the viewer looked like:

Then you get a confirmation dialog that says
"Formatting will erase all recording on the microSD card. Do you want to continue?"
It has Yes and No buttons.

Note:

• The viewer automatically defaulted to display the SD card in H: when opened
• There was only one SD Card in the computer (the thumb drive in G: is NOT and SD Card)
• Format dialogs indicate it will format an SD Card Drive

So I hit "OK" to both dialog boxes without looking further. Had I been more paranoid about possible inconsistencies in the functionality of the viewer, I would have avoided the problem. So I suppose it's my fault. Still...

Having done user interface development, testing, and 3rd party UI evaluations for my employer in the past, I can say with some credibility that this interface is very badly crafted, and actually encourages errors like this.

Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions, folks. Just be aware that the Blackvue software is inconsistent in it's functionality, and check every little thing before you try to do anything major, like formatting the SD Card.

 

[mongo]

Wow, that is bad design, H: on the left panel G: on the dialog box.
Glad to hear there was a backup.

 

[WATTS-UP]

Thanks guys, That rules out BLACKVUE for me, any one recommending another camera?

 

[Ketchups]

THANKS TO THEIR INCOMPETENT PROGRAMMERS, I HAVE NOW LOST A LOT OF IRREPLACEABLE PERSONAL FINANCIAL DATA, PHOTOS OF MY LATE WIFE, AND A GREAT DEAL OF OTHER STUFF!

I'm sorry for your loss..

 

[Red_DS]

Sorry to hear that. I had noticed that extremely poor UI before. I end up unplugging all external drives prior to formatting the microSD card.

Blackvue is a great camera but their software on both mobile and desktop side needs significant work. For example, DR650 and prior would format the entire SD card when you update ANY setting.

 

[Ketchups]

Blackvue is a great camera but their software on both mobile and desktop side needs significant work. For example, DR650 and prior would format the entire SD card when you update ANY setting.

It still does that on the 750S AFAIK, when changing the time for instance in the firmware setting, the SD card gets re-formatted.

I'm considering buying another set of 128gb cards and swapping them out every so often to save the files to a HD.

 

[Red_DS]

Hmm.. I just checked and I guess you are right it still needs formatting when updating time zone.

Re: buying additional microSD cards, if you have your car parked in the garage at night and have wifi, you may want to just do what I do and set up an automated script to download the data from the Blackvue camera. You just need to designate the camera a static IP.

I have the script set to run at midnight every night and it copies all new videos to an external drive. I have another script that deletes any videos older than 2 months. This way I never have to remove the microSD card to get the data.

In case you're interested, I got the script from here Downloading from Blackvue DR650S-2CH (x-post /r/dashcam) • r/teslamotors
and edited it for simpler static IP download. I use Hazel (Mac) to automate the task and delete the older videos.

 

[Red_DS]

If anyone is interested, this is the script I have in the Mac automator (adopted from the reddit link above) as "Run Shell Script". Note: In this case the static IP I assigned for my dashcam is 10.0.1.20 and I have it set to download ALL videos (E,P,N and M).

#!/bin/sh

# Get the list of files
FILES=`curl -s http://10.0.1.71/blackvue_vod.cgi |grep "n:" |cut -c 11-32`

# Loop through them all
for f in ${FILES}; do

  # Make sure we haven't grabbed this one already
  if [ ! -f $f ]; then

    # Figure out the file type
    TYPE=`echo ${f} | cut -d"_" -f 3`

    # Types are E=Event, N=Normal, P=Parking, M=Manual
    # I only care about E (impacts, me tapping the camera to remember, etc...)
    #if [ ${TYPE:0:1} == "E" ] || [ ${TYPE:0:1} == "N" ] || [ ${TYPE:0:1} == "P" ] || [ ${TYPE:0:1} == "M" ]; then

      # Download it!
      cd "/Volumes/DPS Passport/Blackvue Downloads/"
          if ! [ -f ${f} ]; then
              curl -O http://10.0.1.71/Record/${f}
          fi
      cd -
  fi
done