HDD Capacity randomly reduces

Hello,

I've been using WD HDD's for my DVR's and this problem has been really bugging me. Even a brand new HDD at first estimates large storage capacity, but drastically reduces after some time (weeks/months). Any help anyone?

It's called "recordings", they usually do they take up space on the hard drive...

Seriously now; how are you checking those "estimates"? Because no, the HD capacity never reduces.

Thanks for the prompt reply. I know about the recordings, but here's the scenario:

We have equal number of cameras, with equal attributes (motion/delay/schedule) with the same HDD capacity, but one location shows more HDD space remaining during the same interval as the other.

This has been happening to a lot of my HDD.

Could anyone please advise.

Thanks.

That might be for a number of reasons...

- You might be recording with variable bit rate. That will make the recordings on a camera with a lot of movement take up more HD than a camera with little movement.

- You might be recording with motion detection. The more movement, the more recordings, so it will use more HD.

- Cameras might be configured with different resolutions, different frame rates, etc.

Anyway, HD space does not "reduce". The fact that two recordings last 60 minutes with the same settings, does not even mean that they will use the same storage space on HD.

What is your biggest concern here? Are you worried that it will not record enough days for your needs, or are you just watching the numbers on your DVR with no regard to their usefulness? As long as the DVR is recording, and overwriting as it should when it get near capacity, there is no issue at all. 99% of the DVR's out there handle this with no problem so I would not worry about it. If you need to record more total days, just upgrade the HDD to a larger size and move on to the next issue.

Are your lighting levels identical at each camera?

Different lighting levels at each camera can also have an overall effect on the image file size.

I have found that low lighting can cause a very noisy image contributing to larger file size.

Thanks.....one more question...how accurate is the S.M.A.R.T. analysis??

Thanks.....one more question...how accurate is the S.M.A.R.T. analysis??

In general, it is pretty good. I have had a few drives trip the SMART sensor, but when I ran the drive thru SpinRite, there was no issue at all. I would say that is a 1 in 100, probably higher then that actually.

Thank You everyone.

What do u guys think is the future of HDD? I've been hearing a lot about the RAID system and cloud storage. Any inputs on that?