How to choose a suitable HDD for VIGI NVR

Surveillance equipment usually needs to work 24/7, and the video is mostly stored in the hard disk, so there are certain requirements for the hard disk. There are many types and models of hard drives on the market, and improper selection of hard drives may lead to abnormal video, video loss, or even damage to the NVR, to ensure that the video is more stable and reliable, you need to choose a hard drive compatible with the storage device.

Below are some suggestions to choose a suitable hard disk.

1. Choose a surveillance HDD.

The surveillance level HDD is designed for 24/7 continuously recording, which is suggested for VIGI NVR.

For example, the HDD provides from Western Digital has 6 types HDDs, including green, blue, black, red, purple and gold, among them purple level is surveillance HDD.

For SEAGATE, SkyHawk series is the surveillance level HDD.

2. Recommended size and interface of NVR.

VIGI NVRs use SATA interface, which is common for the most of HDD and SSD.

To guarantee the life, we do suggest to use 3.5 inch HDD.

SSD has shorter life and more expensive, so HDD is suggested; 2.5 inch HDD is hard to fix in the NVR, so 3.5inch is better.

3. Choose a suitable volume.

The maximum volume of VIGI NVRs is 10TB, please choose a suitable capacity according to the environment, time, camera’s resolution and encoding type.

You can refer to the following two methods to calculate the capacity.

(1) Estimate via weekly storage:

In general, the monitoring scenario is relatively stable, the weekly capacity consumption is basically the same, so it is recommended to observe the capacity consumption in the past week to estimate.

HDD volume= Weekly storage * Time

(2) Calculate via VIGI Tool:

TP-Link has provided a quick tool to calculate the volume via some special parameters.

Link: https://www.tp-link.com/en/smb/vigi-tool/disk/

Note: The result is a reference value in an ideal condition, the real result will deviate inevitably.

4. Suggested HDD list.

The mainstream hard drive manufacturers now are mainly SEAGATE and Western Digital, we have tested some brands, below are the models we suggest use on VIGI NVR.

Note: The same model may have the different versions, so if you have experienced the compatible issue with above models, kindly contact us as soon as possible, many thanks!