Here's another idea..
The DVR web UI is still accessible, right?
Plug some USB flash drive into the shield, then make that the new storage path for your DVR. Hit Save backup and it should create a Database directory on that flash drive with the latest backups
No luck, that .tar file is empty, 0 bytes. It was created during one of my cmd prompt attempts, but nothing was written.
Good idea, but since I uninstalled and reinstalled the DVR Server as part of my troubleshooting when I first started this, did I screw up any chances of this working?
If that's the case then the local data would be gone too. Those are the only two places the databases exists.. the installation directory for the software, and the Database directory on the primary storage.
What does the SHIELD OS show under Settings > Storage when your drive is attached? Is it recognized at all on that side?
Do you recall if the drive was NTFS or EXFAT?
I would search superuser.com for advice to help filter out the spam/malware/ads
My Shield says there's a problem with your SanDisk harddrive when I plug it in. Then there's no sign of it in the Settings > Storage area. I ran TestDisk and PhotoRec on it overnight and it "recovered" over 330,000 files and 110GB of something, but nothing that I can find that is useful. The only video files it found were mkv files I dropped into the Imports folder a long time ago. There were a ton of m3u files, but no .db files in my search. I am back up and running, with a 3 month old backup I found from my previous harddrive before I upgraded to this SSD drive that flunked out on me.