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Camera Storage Calculator

Size an NVR or VMS from camera count, resolution, frame rate, codec, retention window, and how much of the day actually records. Returns raw storage, a RAID-adjusted figure, and per-camera daily volume.

100 for continuous; 30–50 is typical for motion-triggered.

Filesystem overhead and growth. 10–20% is sane.

Retention presets
67.584 TBRaw capacity to buy61.467 TiB as the OS will report it
4 × 18 TBSuggested arrayRAID 5 (one parity)
50.688 TBUsable neededFootage + headroom
45.619 TBFootage onlyBefore headroom or parity
95.04 GBPer camera / day
140.8 MbpsAggregate stream load8.8 Mbps per camera
Method & assumptions
  • Base bitrates are typical H.264 figures at 15 fps for a medium-complexity scene. A busy street or heavy foliage runs higher; a still corridor runs lower.
  • Bitrate scales with roughly the square root of frame rate. Inter-frame compression means 30 fps costs well under double what 15 fps does.
  • Capacity is quoted in decimal TB (1012 bytes) as drives are sold, with the binary TiB figure alongside because that is what the OS will show you.
  • RAID figures assume equal-size drives; parity capacity is deducted before headroom.
  • Variable-bitrate encoding means any estimate is a planning figure. Buy the next size up if retention is contractual.
The guide behind it

Camera Lens, Field of View and Pixel Density

Storage is the second question. The first is whether the lens puts enough pixels on a subject to be worth recording at all.

Read the guide

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