Work out how many days of footage a fixed amount of disk holds for your camera count and bitrate.
Daily consumption is the aggregate write rate converted from megabits to gigabytes. Dividing available capacity by that figure gives the rolling window before the oldest footage is overwritten. Retention is usually a policy or insurance requirement, and discovering the window is only nine days long after an incident is too late.
Security Camera Retention
Retention days = capacity ÷ (bitrate × 3600 × hours ÷ 8000 × cameras × (1 − saving))
Retention days = capacity ÷ (bitrate × 3600 × hours ÷ 8000 × cameras × (1 − saving)) Daily consumption is the aggregate write rate converted from megabits to gigabytes. Dividing available capacity by that figure gives the rolling window before the oldest footage is overwritten.
Retention is usually a policy or insurance requirement, and discovering the window is only nine days long after an incident is too late.
This calculator takes 5 inputs: Available storage, Number of cameras, Bitrate per camera, Recording hours per day, Saving from motion-only recording. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.