HDD Calculator

This calculator allows you to check how much hard drive storage you need to reach a specific amount of retention time. We measured real Uniview cameras across various sites in Canada to give you the most accurate tool for planning your projects.

Cameras

Add each kind of camera once and set how many. Where it points, how it records and its encoding change how much it stores. The main stream is the bitrate set on the camera; ours are set to 2176 kbps for 4MP and 2944 kbps for 8MP.

Plan

Recorded per day

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Drive space needed

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Camera bandwidth

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Recorder channels

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Recorders that fit

Each recorder we stock that has enough channels, with the fewest drives that hold your days. The suggested one is highlighted. Bandwidth is a guide only.

Check a setup

Pick a recorder and drives to see how long they record these cameras. It starts on the suggested recorder.

How the estimate works

A camera rarely stores its full bitrate. With a variable bitrate and Uniview’s U-Code, the recorder writes less whenever little in the picture changes, so how busy the scene is matters more than the bitrate setting. We measured what 266 camera channels on 25 Uniview systems actually wrote to their drives over 5 to 60 days each, and the calculator uses those shares of the set bitrate.

On 24/7 recording with U-Code Advanced, an indoor camera stored about 14% of its set bitrate and an outdoor camera about 59%: wind, traffic, trees and changing light keep outdoor scenes busy. With U-Code off at a constant bitrate, cameras stored 90 to 100%. Motion-only recording with U-Code Advanced stored about 10%.

Typical is the median of the cameras we measured. Busy is the 75th percentile, the figure we would quote. Full bitrate assumes every camera records its whole set bitrate all day. One exception to keep in mind: a camera with leaves or branches moving right in front of the lens can store even more than its set bitrate.

A drive holds about 97% of its marked size for video: drive makers count 1 TB as 1,000 GB, and the recorder keeps some space for its file system. RAID 1 halves the space; RAID 5 gives up one drive, RAID 6 two.

Bandwidth is the IP cameras’ main-stream bitrates added up (plus sub-streams if you record them), compared with the recorder’s rated incoming bandwidth from its datasheet. The AI (IQ) recorders are rated lower with their analytics on, so we compare with that figure. It is a guide, not a hard limit: a recorder pushed past it can get sluggish, and lowering the cameras’ bitrates fixes it.

Recorder datasheets also list a largest drive per bay, usually 16 TB. We’ve run 24 TB drives in those recorders without trouble, so the calculator doesn’t cap drive size. Larger drives do run warmer, so give the recorder some airflow.