— CCTV Storage · Retail
Retail store — 16 cameras, 30-day retention
Problem. A retail store with 16 4MP H.265 cameras needs 30 days of continuous recording for loss-prevention and incident review.
Answer. 16 cameras × 4MP H.265 × 25 fps × 30 days lands around 6–8 TB of usable storage. The calculator returns the raw figure; the BOQ rounds up for spare-disk and RAID overhead.
02 / In depth
How this preset reads — the engineering view.
Retail CCTV retention is regulatorily and operationally driven. 30 days is the practical minimum for loss-prevention investigations (covers a typical shrinkage-review cycle) and aligns with most insurer requirements for claim corroboration.
This preset assumes 16 cameras at 4MP H.265 with a 25 fps full-frame rate and motion-triggered recording. The calculator returns the storage envelope before RAID overhead — a real BOQ adds 30–40 % for RAID 5/6 redundancy and spare-disk space.
Bitrate is the dominant variable: H.265 is ~50 % more efficient than H.264, motion-only recording typically halves storage again, and dropping fps from 25 to 15 cuts another 40 %. The calculator lets you sweep each axis to find the cost-vs-evidence-quality trade.
Out of scope: VMS choice (Hikvision, Dahua, Milestone, Genetec), camera placement plan, network bandwidth at the switch (CCTV is the dominant traffic load on most retail LANs), and the lifecycle / AMC plan that determines failure-rate budgets for the disk array.
What this preset deliberately does not solve
- RAID overhead adds 30–40 % to the raw storage figure.
- H.265 vs H.264, fps and motion-triggered recording are the dominant compression variables.
- Disk lifecycle (typically 5–7 years for enterprise NAS drives in continuous-write) is a separate TCO line.
How this preset differs from its siblings
The factory-90-day sibling preset configures continuous recording (industrial process audit requires full frames), more cameras, and a 3× longer retention window — the resulting storage envelope is an order of magnitude larger (≈145–150 TB vs 6–8 TB). This preset's distinguishing decisions are motion-triggered recording (acceptable for retail — most frames have no useful information) and the 30-day retention floor (matches insurance and loss-prevention norms). Different sector, different evidence requirement, different storage architecture.
03 / Hydrated calculator
Try the configuration — live.
The calculator below is preloaded with this preset’s state. Adjust any input — your URL stays shareable.
— Calculator · CCTV storage retention
Cameras, codec, retention — storage estimated.
Pick a camera brand and model, recording schedule and retention window. The calculator returns storage volume, HDD plan, recorded bandwidth and an NVR / VMS class recommendation. Sources cited per profile.
Storage estimated
7.5
TB · 30-day retention
Recorded bandwidth
19
Mbps to NVR / VMS
Architecture
Entry NVR
Entry NVR (8–16 channel)
Indicative planning figure on the H.265+ bitrate assumption above — real recording rate varies with scene activity, motion and lighting. Confirm against a site survey and a test-recording sample before sizing the final storage array.
A planning link — not a quote.
- camera
- Hikvision DS-2CD2T46G2-2I AcuSense 4MP
- resolution
- 2560 × 1440 (4MP)
- codec
- H.265+ · 25 fps
- bitrate
- 4 Mbps per camera
- duty
- Motion-triggered (30% duty)
- bandwidth
- live 64.0 Mbps · recorded 19.2 Mbps
- 8 TB drives
- 1 drives
- 10 TB drives
- 1 drives
- 16 TB drives
- 1 drives
Workhorse outdoor 4MP bullet. AcuSense false-alarm filtering reduces motion-triggered storage waste.
What changes this estimate
- Scene activity & motion in the actual footage
- Final camera codec & bitrate ladder
- Retention policy confirmed with the client
- Test-recording sample on site
A planning link — not a quote.
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