Hikvision DS-2CD2143G2-I (4MP Dome): storage & retention

The DS-2CD2143G2-I records 4MP video at a typical 8 Mbps using H.265+, and that bitrate is the single biggest driver of storage in this preset: it works out to roughly 86 GB per camera per day of continuous recording. H.265+ is a smart, motion-aware variant of H.265 that further compresses static scene content beyond plain H.264, so the same 4MP image costs meaningfully less storage per day than an equivalent H.264 stream would.

Storage scales in a straight line from there: 16 cameras across 30 days of continuous recording lands at roughly 41 TB. Double the retention to 60 days and the figure roughly doubles too; add cameras and it scales the same way per camera. At 16 cameras and this retention window, the resulting head-end sits in the Entry NVR class rather than a mid-tier or enterprise recorder tier.

Use the calculator by dragging the camera count and retention-day sliders and switching the recording schedule to see the storage total recompute live. Moving off continuous 24/7 to a motion-only schedule applies a duty factor that reduces the effective recording hours per day, which lowers the storage figure without changing the camera's underlying bitrate.

The calculator does not decide the real-world bitrate variance that comes from actual scene activity (motion, lighting, clutter can push bitrate above or below the 8 Mbps average), any RAID or redundancy overhead on the storage array, whether footage is mirrored to a separate failover or archive tier, or whether the network and recorder can sustain the required write throughput. Those decisions sit with the recorder and storage design, not with this estimate.