Archiving is an integrated and automated feature with which recordings are moved to free up space for new recordings. By default, recordings are stored in the database for each camera. The database for each camera can contain a maximum of 600,000 records or 40 GB. Your system automatically archives recordings if a camera's database becomes full. Consequently, having sufficient archiving space is important.
You do not have to do anything to enable archiving. Archiving runs in the background and is automatically enabled and carried out from the moment your system is installed. The most recent recordings are saved on a local storage in order to prevent network-related problems in the saving process.
The default settings for your system is to perform archiving once a day, or if your database becomes full. You can change the settings for when and how often archiving takes place in the Management Application. You can also schedule archiving up to 24 times a day, with a minimum of one hour between each one. This way, you can pro-actively archive recordings, so databases never become full. The more you expect to record, the more often you should archive.
You can also change the retention time, which is the total amount of time you want to keep recordings from a camera (recordings in the camera's database as well as any archived recordings) under the properties of the individual camera.
Your system automatically archives recordings if a camera's database becomes full. You only specify one time limit (the retention time) as part of the general Recording and Archiving paths properties. Note that retention time determines when archiving takes place. Retention time is the total amount of time for which you want to keep recordings from a camera (that is recordings in the camera's database as well as any archived recordings).
Backup of archives
Milestone does not recommend that you create backups based on the content of camera databases as it may cause sharing violations or other malfunctions. Instead, create backups based on the content of archives. If you have not specified separate archiving locations for separate cameras, you could back up the default local archiving directory, Archives.
Important: When you schedule a backup, make sure the backup job does not overlap with any scheduled archiving times.
If archiving fails
Under rare circumstances, archiving may fail, for example due to network problems. However, this does not pose a threat in your system. The system creates a new database and continues archiving in this new database. You can work with and view both this new database and the old one like any other databases.
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