What this tool does
Estimate how many days of footage will fit on a drive you already have. Use it to check whether your storage can meet a target, such as keeping the last 30 days.
How to use it
- Enter the drive capacity in TB and the percentage you want to leave spare.
- Add your camera count, average recording bitrate and hours saved each day. Bitrate, shown in Mbps, is the amount of video data produced each second.
- Enter your desired number of days and calculate to see whether the drive is large enough.
Reading your result
“Estimated retention” is how far back your recordings could go before older footage is overwritten. “Complete days available” rounds that estimate down.
Example: a 4 TB drive with 10% reserved holds about 20.8 days from four 4 Mbps cameras recording continuously.
Keep in mind
If several drives form a RAID array, enter its usable capacity, rather than adding up the sizes printed on the drives. Some recorders also give each camera a separate storage allowance.
Busy scenes and changing recording settings can shorten retention. Compare the estimate with the oldest footage actually available on your recorder.
Use Download results or Print to keep your inputs and estimate. The tool uses the values you enter; it does not read your equipment’s settings.