SMB/CIFS Hikvision Network Connection - wont initialize

Hi,

I recently purchased two DS-2CD2032-I's and am trying to them up to use my Server (Windows 8 OS) as the storage device. I have managed to get reasonably far in that I upgraded the camera firmware to V5.1.2 (build 140116) and then configured the share so that it would be recognised in the storage management screen. When I look at the storage man screen it indicates of the 50GB I have allocated is available. When I format the device it immediately turns to complete and no files are written. The device then appears as uninitialized within the screen.

On the Windows side I have allocated two new empty partitions, 50GB, each to the cameras and have created a share for each of them. On the permissions side the username that I am logging in with has been configured with full read, edit and modify rights.

I feel like I must be missing something obvious as I cant find any other posts with a similar issues.

Can anyone here help?

Please post a screen shot of the camera's page that shows the storage path. Unless it is really weird it should be ip address of the server\recording folder\sub folder... etc so an example would be:

192.168.1.49/recordings/camera1/

I think that some Hik cameras actually have a table that has the IP in one cell and the path on another. Just make sure the slashes as as above and not the other direction.

It is strange indeed, my server is used as a central storage device so it has lots of shares on it and I am no stranger to configuring such things. It does feel like the server is accepting the connection. If I change my username for example the server appears offline. So I feel like the config must be right. Maybe there is an issue on the server side that I am not thinking about? It should be a formatted partition that I am connecting to right?

Here are some screenshots of my config, I am not sure there is anything particularly strange there. I should also note that I did a factory reset on both after loading the new firmware. The only changes thereafter were:

- Password change for admin & new user created

- All ports changed (Http, RTSP, HTTPS, Server) for forwarding purposes.

Here is my config:

Windows 8 Setup

Just tried again having done another factory reset and this time leaving the port configuration the same. No difference?

Okay it seems like nobody has any idea what the issue could be with my set-up. Does anyone have any good ideas of how I could get this to work using NFS as an alternative? Can I use FreeNFS to set-up the camera?

I understand that these cameras are more stable if the drive is dedicated to the camera, does this mean I would need to use two instances of FreeNFS?

Is there anywhere in the menu to mount that share?

Is there anywhere in the menu to mount that share?

Thanks for your advice. Which menu do you refer to? The camera menu does not have any option to mount it, however if I refresh the screen it appears that the share does mount. It just mounts with 0 GB free, which is incorrect as there is 50GB available.

Has anyone got the cameras working with FreeNFS? I have just tried linking to the NFS share but it is appearing offline? Tried opening the firewall etc.

Any ideas?

Interesting development. I was running various testing scenarios and discovered something interesting.

Sharing a single drive to the camera resulted in the camera not initializing the drive. However if I share a folder within the drive then the camera seems to initialise properly.

I now need to test that both cameras will record, but at least I am one step closer. I have no idea why the share does not work directly from a drive - Very odd.

Hello, I am having pretty much the same problem with my camera(firmware 5.1.2), smb/cif wont initialize, did you solve the problem, could you please post the actual steps to solve this issue? Thanks!

Hello, I am having pretty much the same problem with my camera(firmware 5.1.2), smb/cif wont initialize, did you solve the problem, could you please post the actual steps to solve this issue? Thanks!

It turns out that for some reason (must be a windows problem) the test fails if the network share does not have its own drive partition. I managed to get it working by creating two new drive partitions one for each camera and then connecting to a network share dedicated to that partition.

I have now just purchased a third camera and have the same issue again....I think I remember there being an issue if there were too many partitions. On my drive the new camera is the 4th partition.

Does anyone have a clue as to why this issue may be occurring, and what I can do about it?

I wasnt right in my last post. You need a separate drive partition, then a folder on that drive which is shared. There should be no other shares on the drive. This hasnt helped me with my issue but that needs some more investigations.

Steps in Win 8.

1. Create and quick format partition

2. Create folder on that partition (one word, preferably lower case with no special characters or spaces)

3. Right click folder and open properties

4. On Sharing Tab click Advanced Sharing

5. Click 'Share this Folder' and check name

6. Click Permissions button

7. Add 'Everyone' and give full permissions.

8. Click 'Ok' on dialogs until you are back on folder properties.

9. Go to Security Tab

10. Edit security setting to give authenticated user, admins etc full permissions.

11. Restart

12. Try the share again.

Hope that helps and works. It did for me on the first two shares, I now have no luck on the 3rd!

Giving up now...!

Just tried loads of different things. The new Camera has Firmware v5.2 whilst old cameras are on v5.12. I think that the firmware is the thing getting in the way at the moment, time to wait for HikVision to sort things out.

Jon

PS - if enough of us email HikVision then they might get the message to fix this! I sent a note of to them here: rma@hikvisionusa.com

Grr - another attempt tonight. Added my new share with one of my old v5.1 cameras and everything initialised and captured perfectly. Does it work with v5.2 NOPE!

Success - not sure why yet. This time I ignored the test button, which still fails and just saved the profile. The drive did then appear in the Storage screen and it did initialise!!!

Just tried it with another network share. The main process that seems to work is to do the following:

1. New partition, new folder

2. Right click the folder (ensure the name has no spaces special characters etc) and select properties

3. on the sharing tab, do not use the advanced button, use the 'Share' button

4. Add 'Everyone' to the list of users and make 'Everyone' read and write.

5. Next and close

6. Add the share to the camera and Voila!

Hello, thank you for your quick answer, I haven't tried your solution yet because I don't have clean partition for now, but I will ASAP, what I have tried before was few different firmware versions, also some firmware hacks like posted here (hex solution: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=39568 ) but with no luck. Also I have mailed Hikvision's support but no answer yet. Thanks!

My solution to this might not be applicable to all in this thread as I am using a Qnap NAS. But here it is in case it helps some:

I was able to get my DS-2CD2432F-IW setup and working nicely with my Qnap NAS, using SMB. I initially tried SMB and then NFS, failing at both attempts. I was repeatedly formatting the share/directory, but then immediately having the camera tell me it was "uninitialized," as many have reported.

The trick to get it working (I think) was to

- create a user account just for the camera

- then set the quota for that user to 300gb

The specific number probably doesn't matter; I picked it because I saw some mention of hikvisions having trouble with NAS drives over 500 gb. It seems that the failures are due to the camera either seeing too big of a "drive" (in this case all 1.5 terabytes of my NAS), or because the camera looked at the drive and couldn't get any value for free space. After setting the quota to 300gb, that value showed up right away as the disk size in the Hikvision setup screen.

My solution to this might not be applicable to all in this thread as I am using a Qnap NAS. But here it is in case it helps some:

 

I was able to get my DS-2CD2432F-IW setup and working nicely with my Qnap NAS, using SMB. I initially tried SMB and then NFS, failing at both attempts. I was repeatedly formatting the share/directory, but then immediately having the camera tell me it was "uninitialized," as many have reported.

 

The trick to get it working (I think) was to

 

- create a user account just for the camera

- then set the quota for that user to 300gb

 

The specific number probably doesn't matter; I picked it because I saw some mention of hikvisions having trouble with NAS drives over 500 gb. It seems that the failures are due to the camera either seeing too big of a "drive" (in this case all 1.5 terabytes of my NAS), or because the camera looked at the drive and couldn't get any value for free space. After setting the quota to 300gb, that value showed up right away as the disk size in the Hikvision setup screen.

this worked nicely with my Synology as well.. thanks !!