Drive

For example the C:\ drive.

Purpose

Select what you want to use the drive for:

Not in use: Do not use the drive.

Recording: Only available if the drive is a local drive on the surveillance system server. Network drives cannot be used for recording. Use the drive for storing recordings in the regular database for the system.

Archiving: Use the drive for archiving. For archiving, it is generally a good idea to use a drive which has plenty of space. With dynamic path selection for archives, you do not have to worry about drive space.

Rec. & Archiving: Only available if the drive is a local drive on the surveillance system server. Network drives cannot be used for recording. Use the drive for storing recordings in the regular database for the system as well as for archiving.

Recording Path

The path to the folder in which to store the camera's database. The default path is C:\MediaDatabase.

To browse for another folder, click the browse icon next to the required cell. You can only specify a path to a folder on a local drive. You cannot specify a path to a network drive. If you use a network drive, you cannot save recordings if the network drive becomes unavailable.

If you change the recording path, and you have existing recordings at the old location, you are asked whether you want to move the recordings to the new location, leave them at the old location, or delete them.

If you have several cameras, and several local drives are available, you can improve performance by distributing individual cameras' databases across several drives.

Archiving Path

You can only edit this if you do not use dynamic paths for archiving. Path to the folder in which the camera's archived recordings should be stored. Default is C:\MediaDatabase.

To browse for another folder, click the browse icon next to the relevant cell. If you change the archiving path, and there are existing archived recordings at the old location, you are asked whether you want to move the archived recordings to the new location (recommended), leave them at the old location, or delete them. Note that if you move archived recordings, your system also archives what is currently in the camera database. In case you wonder why the camera database is empty just after you have moved archived recordings, this is the reason.

Total Size

Total size of the drive.

Free Space

Amount of unused space left on the drive.

Dynamic path selection for archives

If using this option (highly recommended), you should select a number of different local drives for archiving. If the path containing the surveillance system database is on one of the drives you have selected for archiving, the system always tries to archive to that drive first. If not, the system automatically archives to the archiving drive with the most available space at any time, provided there is not a camera database using that drive.

Which drive has the most available space may change during the archiving process, and archiving may therefore happen to several archiving drives during the same process. This fact has no impact on how users find and view archived recordings.

Archiving Times

Specify when you want your system to automatically move recordings to your archiving path(s). You can specify up to 24 archiving times per day, with minimum one hour between each one. Select the hour, minute and second values and click the up and down buttons to increase or decrease values, or simply overwrite the selected value, and then click Add. The more you expect to record, the more often you should archive.

Network Drive

Lets you add a network drive to the list of drives. First specify the network drive, then click Add (the button becomes available when you specify a network drive) . Note that network drives cannot be used for recording, only for archiving.