How to Choose the Best Hard Drive for VIGI NVR

Surveillance systems usually need to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With video recordings mostly stored on a physical hard dive.  Not all hard drives are equal and there are certain requirements a customer would want to look for before purchasing a hard drive for their surveillance system. There are many types and models of hard drives on the market, and using the wrong one may lead to abnormal video, loss, or even damage to the NVR. To ensure that the video is more stable and reliable, you want to choose a hard drive designed for video surveillance or to be used in an NVR.

Below are some considerations to think about.

1. Choose a surveillance Hard Drive.

The surveillance level hard drive is designed for 24/7 continuous recording and is recommended to be used with Vigi systems

For example, Western Digital has 6 types of hard drives, including green, blue, black, red, purple, and gold, among them purple level is surveillance HDD.

For SEAGATE, The SkyHawk series is their surveillance-level drive.

2. Recommended size and interface for the NVR.

VIGI NVRs use a SATA interface, which is common for most hard drives on the market.

we recommend using a 3.5-inch HDD.

Solid State Drives (SSD) have a shorter lifespan and tend to be more expensive, so a more standard 3.5-inch HDD is recommended for long-term use.

3. Choose a suitable volume (capacity).

The maximum volume or storage capacity of VIGI NVRs is 10TB.  You will want to choose a suitable capacity according to the environment, camera’s resolution setting, and encoding type.

Refer to the following two methods to calculate your capacity needs.

(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, practical results will vary..

4. Suggested HDD list.

Note: Drives may vary based on hardware version.  Reach out to support if you have questions or concerns