CCTV DVR hard drives

Hard drives - the modern-day CCTV video cassette

All DVRs store their footage on an internal hard drive. Most use a SATA hard drive, this stands for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment and is the method by which the hard drive connects to a device. Computers also use a SATA hard drive but DVRs and computers are different. Unlike a computer, your DVR is designed to run 24 hours a day with constant data transfer onto the hard drive. For this reason, it is important that you use AV grade drives specifically designed for a DVR rather than standard computer drives which have a tendency to fail prematurely.

We sell hard drives separately to the DVR because storage requirements vary between customers. If you purchase a DVR and a hard drive from us at the same time we will fit the drive into your DVR, format the hard drive for you and then configure the basic settings of the DVR so it arrives plug & play. This saves you time and means everything works properly out of the box.

How many days of footage will my CCTV hard drive store?

There are a number of factors that will determine this. The main things to consider are:

Recording quality. The higher the quality the less time a given hard drive will record for. HD 1080P produces 5 times more data than standard-definition D1.

The number of frames per second you record at. This is something you can change without compromising your CCTV system. See the section covering real-time DVRs.

The number of cameras you have on your system. Each camera requires space for its footage to be stored.

Length of time footage is stored on our HD 1080P DVR recorders at 6 frames per second

* 2 drives fitted. Lowering the frame rate to 3fps will double the above recording times.

Tip

Because our HD DVRs are hybrid consider using a combination of standard resolution and HD cameras at the same time on the same recorder. Using standard-definition D1 or 960H cameras in less critical areas means you reduce the amount of data going onto the hard drive and extend recording times.