The hardware and software design of power fault recorder based on the embedded systems was introduced .The system adopted modularization design and double CPU work with each other. In order to improve the precision and speed of fault recording, The DSP chip TMS320C33 was used to diagnose the power system and record the parameter of power system when an inaccuracy or an abnormity occurred, which satisfied the requirement of high accuracy of the data. S3C44B0X as the main control processor was adopted, the embedded operate system uClinux was transplanted, which make easier to display, transfer and storage of important information, and it was useful to communicate with operators. Compared with the power fault recorder based on traditional MCU, the system had several advantages, such as higher accuracy of data acquisition, higher solution speed, bigger system capacity, and so on. If the system combines with better fault detection algorithm and data compression algorithm, its performance was improved to a great extent.