I plan on running two 3MP Hikvision 2332 cameras at the highest quality setting. Any idea how much storage it would take to record all 24 hours per camera? Thanks
Rough estimate of daily storage requirement for 24-hours
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@steve6690... I don't have my cameras yet. They should be here Wednesday or Thursday. Anyway, my plan is to store the recordings on an external 2TB Thunderbolt drive attached to a MacBook Pro so I won't be using ivms 4200. Instead, I will most likely be using Sighthound or any other VMS that runs under Mac OS X. Thanks for the reply!
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Thanks @NetviewCCTV. I'll work with that. I was hoping to keep a rolling 7 days for both cameras combined.
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I'm sure there is a formula somewhere but this is how I calculate it.
for example : a camera running at 8192 Kbps means it's filling up your drive with 8192 kilobits per second. Storage is measured in BYTES though, not BITS, so you need to do a conversion.
There are 8 bits in a byte so at 8192 Kbps you need 8192/8 KiloBytes for every second of recording. So that would be 1024 KiloBytes per second.
There are 1024 KiloBytes in a MegaByte. so divide that by 1024 to convert KiloBytes to MegaBytes = 1.0 MegaByte per second.
So 8192 kbps (kilo bits per second) equals 1.0 MegaBytes per second.
There are 86400 seconds in a day. So 1.0 x 86400 = 86400 megaBytes of storage. There are 1024 MegaBytes in a GigaByte. 86400 divide by 1024 = 84.374GB
So, my completely unqualified formula is : bitrate in kbps divided by 8, then divide by 1,048,576, then multiply by 86400 gives you your daily storage requirements in GigaBytes.
Please feel free to correct if I've gone wrong. It's been many years since I last used all this stuff
for example : a camera running at 8192 Kbps means it's filling up your drive with 8192 kilobits per second. Storage is measured in BYTES though, not BITS, so you need to do a conversion.
There are 8 bits in a byte so at 8192 Kbps you need 8192/8 KiloBytes for every second of recording. So that would be 1024 KiloBytes per second.
There are 1024 KiloBytes in a MegaByte. so divide that by 1024 to convert KiloBytes to MegaBytes = 1.0 MegaByte per second.
So 8192 kbps (kilo bits per second) equals 1.0 MegaBytes per second.
There are 86400 seconds in a day. So 1.0 x 86400 = 86400 megaBytes of storage. There are 1024 MegaBytes in a GigaByte. 86400 divide by 1024 = 84.374GB
So, my completely unqualified formula is : bitrate in kbps divided by 8, then divide by 1,048,576, then multiply by 86400 gives you your daily storage requirements in GigaBytes.
Please feel free to correct if I've gone wrong. It's been many years since I last used all this stuff
Thanks @steve6690! I'll know soon enough once my cameras arrive and are hooked up. This gives me something to work with. Now I'm going to find out what the issues are involved with storing data from the cameras to an external drive.
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As @fenderman has already pointed out, the amount of storage needed is only dependant upon the bitrate alone. Nothing in the documentation you linked to says what the bitrate was set to. And if you look at what they sell, they aren't even all the same brand, so while one brands "highest quality" is a set bitrate, another brands might be different for the same "highest quality".
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Just checked one of my hikvision 3MP, it's at full resolution and 15 FPS with variable bitrate and "medium" quality, it's going back 4 days and 8 hours on a 200 GB drive.
Another cam same exact config and same size drive is going back 5 days and 6 hours. So at these settings it's 40-50 GB/day. I see no point really in going with full motion FPS from a security standpoint.
Both also have factory default max bitrate of 4096. I've not fiddled with framerate to see how it affects picture quality, as I assume that if I'm currently hitting that 4096 ceiling and increased frame rate I would end up losing some detail, but not sure--it certainly makes sense that I should (to me).
Another cam same exact config and same size drive is going back 5 days and 6 hours. So at these settings it's 40-50 GB/day. I see no point really in going with full motion FPS from a security standpoint.
Both also have factory default max bitrate of 4096. I've not fiddled with framerate to see how it affects picture quality, as I assume that if I'm currently hitting that 4096 ceiling and increased frame rate I would end up losing some detail, but not sure--it certainly makes sense that I should (to me).
External drives constantly have a problem of "disconnecting" from their host, as they really aren't made to be constantly written and read from, as a result you will get intermitten drops and framerate losses.
I was certainly a victim of this myself and as a result was having a hard time getting the begining of clips to record as well as many instances where clips had gaps in time, frame loss and lots of pixelation. To get around this, I set the new clips to the internal drive with a small amount (50GB) of storage. Once this space is full it moves the clips to storage on the external drive. I think this works because the external drive is accessed only when the internal space is "full" and BI writes to the external all in one shot.
Perhaps I've been lucky with my external drives 
I have two old 200 GB USB drives, each dedicated to a hikvision camera and each have been running flawlessly for nine months. They're just plugged in with USB cables and packing taped to the top of my PC! Recording constantly, neither one has burned out yet. Also have an external drive running for the same period of time to a router without any problems yet (also constantly recording images to it). I may be running on borrowed time, but I think most of these enclosures are just using cheap laptop drives, so one should reasonably get a few years out of one.
It's very possible I'm having more frames dropped than I should. I've not really explored it.
I have two old 200 GB USB drives, each dedicated to a hikvision camera and each have been running flawlessly for nine months. They're just plugged in with USB cables and packing taped to the top of my PC! Recording constantly, neither one has burned out yet. Also have an external drive running for the same period of time to a router without any problems yet (also constantly recording images to it). I may be running on borrowed time, but I think most of these enclosures are just using cheap laptop drives, so one should reasonably get a few years out of one.It's very possible I'm having more frames dropped than I should. I've not really explored it.
I don't think most have problems with the external drives when they are recording constantly. My problems where due to the drives becoming unresponsive or slow to respond after their "sleep". Mine were sleeping because I only record on motion events and there could be hours with no motion event to record thus they would go to sleep. When they had to be spun back up, they presenting all sorts of problems.
As for the longevity of using a drive constantly, I don't think you have anything to worry about. The BackBlaze studies on drive life is an interesting read...
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
As for the longevity of using a drive constantly, I don't think you have anything to worry about. The BackBlaze studies on drive life is an interesting read...
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
Thanks everyone, great info on the data storage requirements. I'll just mess around and see what it looks like once I get them installed Friday. Also, thanks @corkangel76, I'm really hoping my external drive will work okay. It's using a Thunderbolt connection to my MacBook. Good info there @ruppmeister, thanks!
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Yeah I don't think it's possible in windows to tell an external drive not to sleep (I know you can internal), though I imagine you could install a service--actually I'm sure you could--that would just write and delete bits to it to keep it alive, if there is no way within the OS to set that up automatically.
Those links are good. I think that same site did a comparison of SSD and showed that SSD on average are a good bit less prone to annual failure than mechanical. The baracuda drives are hilariously awful, those failure rates are not good.
nzipcamera
Getting the hang of it
This link may help.
Hikvision Disk Calculator (V2.0)
The Disk Calculator software can be used to calculate the recording time when the disk space is given and calculate the disk space when the recording time is given. In the software, you are also allowed to configure the device parameters including device type, video standard and channel number, and the channel parameters including image quality, resolution, frame rate and bitrate. The software displays the recommended bitrate after resolution and frame rate are selected for the configuration.
http://www.hikvision.com/en/us/download_more.asp?id=1526
Hikvision Disk Calculator (V2.0)
The Disk Calculator software can be used to calculate the recording time when the disk space is given and calculate the disk space when the recording time is given. In the software, you are also allowed to configure the device parameters including device type, video standard and channel number, and the channel parameters including image quality, resolution, frame rate and bitrate. The software displays the recommended bitrate after resolution and frame rate are selected for the configuration.
http://www.hikvision.com/en/us/download_more.asp?id=1526