What kind of hard drive do I need for security cameras?

Security Camera Hard Drive 101 Security camera hard drive, or known as a surveillance-rated hard disk drive (HDD), is primarily used for surveillance video footage storage 24/7 locally.24 Dec 2021 [1]

Best Hard Disks for CCTV Camera DVR (2022)Seagate SkyHawk AI Surveillance (Best DVR HDD)Seagate Ironwolf Pro Surveillance.WD Purple Surveillance Hard Drive.Toshiba N300 Surveillance Hard Drive.MaxDigitalData CCTV Drive.27 Sept 2021 [2]

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. [3]

264 squeezes the security camera footage onto the available hard drive space, it’s almost impossible to accurately predict the amount of footage any hard drive will allow you to store..Hard Drives – What Size?Number of CamerasHDD SizeStorage Time81TB6 days82TB12 days83TB18 days84TB24 days13 more rows [4]

One terabyte gives you the option of storing roughly: 250,000 photos taken with a 12MP camera; 250 movies or 500 hours of HD video; or. [5]

How much can you pack onto a 2 TB drive? About 34,000 hours of MP3s, 80 days worth of video, 620,000 photos, 1,000 of high-definition movies. In a press release, Kingston claims it can carry 70 hours of 4K video.4 Jan 2017 [6]

A Standard Hard Disk is engineered to read, write, and transfer data simultaneously. Whereas a Surveillance Hard Disk is engineered to perform write operation for the maximum part of its life, as the Hard Disks used in the surveillance system is used to write data 90% of the time and 10% for playback. [7]

A regular surveillance-rated hard drive will typically last on average 5-7 years, however, it is often the case that their lifespan in CCTV recorders is much shorter. For many reasons, users may find themselves replacing hard drives every year.9 June 2021 [8]

If you have your external hard drive plugged in all the time, it can lead to wear and tear on the drive. Over time, this can cause your hard drive to fail sooner than it would if it were only used intermittently. To avoid this issue, try unplugging your external hard drive when it’s not in use. [9]

Surveillance drives such as Seagate’s SkyHawk are a subset of hard drives built to process large volumes of data from high definition cameras as accurately as possible while still focusing on maximizing the drive’s lifespan and power consumption with 24/7 read/write recording setups in mind.5 Oct 2016 [10]

This article answers this question and explains the reasons for using HDDs. Here’s a quick answer; Yes, a CCTV system works without a hard disk drive if you use alternative ways to record the footage, such as micro SD cards or cloud storage servers located on the Internet. [11]

1 Answer. Yes, your CCTV recorder should work fine with a standard desktop SATA hard drive although surveillance drives have a number of benefit including being more efficient for storing and reviewing data from CCTV recorders, better at temperature management, designed for 24/7 operation and improved reliability.10 June 2019 [12]