Fitting Your Own CCTV Hard Drive

If you have or are planning to purchase a CCTV DVR without a hard drive fitted and are considering to install your own hard drive it is very straight forward to do so. There are a number of important points to consider when undertaking this project. The first thing to consider is the size of the hard drive you will need i.e. If you need your DVR to record large amounts of surveillance footage you will need a big hard drive. Commonly if users have a four camera system they will require a DVR with at least a 500GB capacity. This will support approximately two weeks recording at about 12FPS. If you have a 8 channel DVR you should be looking for a 1TB HDD which again would give you about two weeks recording at 12FPS accross all 8 channels. You will also need to check with your DVR supplier the specifications of the DVR. You will need to know whether the DVR takes a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive and whether you need a Serial ATA (SATA) or Parallel ATA (P-ATA) compatible hard drive. Once you have purchased the hard drive and it is time to install the unit in to your recorder you have to be aware that hard drives must be protected from Electrostatic Discharge (ESD). You must also avoid storing the drives in very hot, very cold and high humidity environments. It goes without saying that if you drop or jarr your disk drive they can easily be damaged because they include high precision mechanics so during installation, do not stack drives on top of each other and do not drop or jarr the drives during operation. If the hard drive you install seems to have a smaller memory than advertised this is quite common as actual accessible capacity may vary from the advertised capacity due to formatting and partioning of the hard drive as well as due to your operating system.

How to install?

1.) Turn off the DVR, unplug the external cables and open up the DVR. Mount the hard disk drive (HDD) in the designated place in the DVR with the screws provided with the product.

2.) Connect 40 pin interface cable and power cable. Make sure that the direction of the cables are correct and matches the shape of the receptacles when connecting cables. Incorrect cable connection may damage the hard drive both cables are keyed and will only fit one way so make double sure you are connecting them properly.

3.) Once you are happy everything is in place you can connect your DVR to your power socket and then power up.

4.) The DVR will automatically detect the hard drive but you should always format any new hard drive after installation. If you are unsure how to format your hard drive you should find the information you need in your DVR user manual.

If you at all unsure on the best way to install a hard drive it would be practical to leave it to the professionals as hard drives can be damaged which will result in added expense. We have a range of CCTV hard drives which are sutable for a wide range of DVR's.