ESP DVR-EZ - "no HDD" error

A friend asked me to take a look at this DVR which she has in her shop and which is supposed to record the images from four cameras that are dotted about the place. The problem was that it wasn't recording anything. Once I'd hooked it up to a monitor, I could see a message on the screen - "no HDD". Since there was no suggestion that the HDD had been removed, I disconnected all the cables and opened the DVR up. There was indeed a HDD in there but rather than wondering whether there was a fault with that, I could immediately see blown capacitors on the power supply for the HDD. Here are some photos of the DVR and internals:

And here are the two blown capacitors:

The values are 1000uf 16v. The smaller capacitors (470uf 25v) situated nearby were fine. So, I replaced the faulty caps with some new ones from CPC. Here they are:

Before reassembling everything I also checked the state of the HDD. It worked fine despite its age, although to test it at all I had to dig out an old IDE to USB connector. Yes, remember IDE HDDs?

I'll update this post once I've been able to check whether the new caps have resolved the issue. And for my own benefit, here is the relevant user manual for the DVR.

More soon, no doubt....


D