Guides
CCTV storage: sizing the drive to the days you need
Four 2MP cameras recording continuously fill roughly one terabyte in fifteen to twenty days. Double the cameras or the resolution and the days halve. Pick retention from how long problems take to surface — a month for most businesses — and size the drive to that, not to the leftover budget.
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Retention comes first
If a stock discrepancy only shows up when the monthly count is done, two weeks of footage is already gone when you need it. Work out the longest gap between an incident and its discovery, add margin, and buy that many days. For a four-camera 2MP shop that usually means a 2TB drive; higher resolution or more cameras scale it up from there.
Motion recording: real gains, real limits
Recording only when something moves can stretch retention several times over on a quiet stairwell or a boundary camera that sees nothing all night. On a Blue Area shopfront there is movement from open to close, so the gain is minimal. Every decent recorder sets the schedule per camera, and the honest configuration mixes both: continuous on the busy views, motion on the quiet ones, reviewed once the system has run a week.
The drive is a consumable
A surveillance-rated drive writing around the clock lasts three to five years; a desktop drive dropped into a recorder gives out sooner. Ask which drive is on your quote, because it is the line most likely to be quietly downgraded. An abrupt power cut mid-write can also corrupt footage, which is one more reason the recorder belongs on a UPS.
How much storage do I need for CCTV?
How do I keep a clip beyond the overwrite?
Export it. When the drive fills, the recorder deletes the oldest footage automatically and nothing stops it. Anything that matters goes to a USB stick the day you find it — we demonstrate the export at every handover.
Can footage back up automatically?
Yes, to a second drive or network storage on site. Cloud backup is workable on the fibre connections common in Islamabad sectors, but it spends upload bandwidth all day — check the line before committing.
Rather have it done?
CCTV installation means a free survey of your shop, office or home, a camera plan that covers gates, counters and blind corners, cabling run through conduit, a recorder sized for the days of footage you want, and phone viewing working before handover. A four-camera 2MP package in Islamabad or Rawalpindi runs PKR 55,000 to 85,000 fitted.
CCTV installation in Islamabad — prices and scope