Surveillance storage and hard drives

Video surveillance hard drives, microSD cards and storage systems for NVR and XVR recorders.

The hard drive is the part you choose last and the one that decides everything: it holds the evidence. A desktop drive fitted in a recorder wears out within a few months, because an NVR writes continuously, 24/7, several streams at once. Drives from the WD Purple range are designed for this workload.

Don't oversize. In Belgium, CCTV footage must be deleted after one month, unless it can serve as evidence: beyond that, you are paying for storage that the law requires you to delete. Our guide How many TB for 4 cameras? gives the calculation based on the number of cameras, the resolution and the recording mode.

Also check how many drive bays your recorder has and the maximum capacity per bay it supports: some entry-level models top out well below 8 TB.

See also: NVR recorders · PoE NVRs · XVR recorders · Which NVR should you choose?