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How many gigabytes of storage required for a surveillance system
TamaƱo de disco duro para videovigilancia

Calculate the size of hard disk needed for video surveilance.

INTRODUCTION
I have been unlucky with my German neigbours. They started legal action against me because they believe that part of my house is theirs. I had an argument with them, I used the C word, the F word and called them nazis. In the next few days they slashed my car tyres twice. This has cost a lot of money so I have installed security cameras as a deterrent. The model I bought is a ANNKE 4CH 1080P POE HD-TVI 4-in-1 DVR With 4X Bullet Camera. This comes without a hard disk. On order to work out how big a disk I need I made this calculator.
By the way: This is my third lot of bad German neighbours. I know lots of nice Germans but have had bad luck when they live next door.
Fill in the form with the details of the system and we will tell you the amount of gigabytes you will need.

H.264 Recorder

Number of recording days ? (write a number)



How many cameras?



Resolution?



Frame Rate?



Hours per day.





COMMENTS
The amount of storage space depends on what you are using the surveilance system for. If you are going to be absent form the place where you have the cameras for a long time then you need as big a storage as possible. My own requirement is only one night but I bought a 3 terabyte hard disk which is a lot more than I need. I figured that in the future I may want to use the system for something else once the problem with the Germans has died down. I ordered a 3Tb Hard Disk - WD Surveillance Storage, videovigilancia, 3.5", SATA 6Gb/s. It is from the WD purple range which is specially designed for surveilance systems. This means that are designed to work 24 hours a day and are less likely to fail with heavy use.

It is possible to use quite a small hard disk and have the NVR send an email or write to an FTP server when it is activated by the motion sensor. This is not possible in my case because the house is near to the coast and there is a lot of wind blowing the trees about, also the car is parked the other side of the street and cars pass in front. This would create too many false positives. The problem with motion sensors with outside cameras is that they are activated by rain, insects and the occasional curious bird.
I also have a house in the mountains and I am absent for several weeks at a time. The NVR, which is where the hard disk is actually stored, is hidden in an unlikely place so even if I get robbed they won't find the footage. I also have the system save jpg files to an external FTP server and send images to an gmail email account specially for this purpose.
Aparently even if I do capture someone on camera doing me wrong I won't be able to use the footage in court. So why am I don't all this? I don't know. It just makes me feel better.