External Hard Drive Question

[thailey08 0]

Hey guys im a newbie..I purchased a Standalone 4CH CCTV DVR Security Kit H.264 on ebay and I was wondering if I can use a external hard drive for storage? I was thinking that I could hook it up via usb port on the DVR?

 

I would appreciate all responses!!

[spanky34 0]

Normally you can NOT use an external USB hard drive for direct storage.

 

You will need to purchase one to put inside of the DVR and hook it up to the SATA port.

 

The USB ports are only used for a mouse and backing up video footage. If using an external hard drive to backup previously recorded footage, it would be best to use a hard drive that has it's own power source since most of the inexpensive DVR's are grossly under powered.

[Dipol_CCTV 0]

Im pretty sure its impossible to record something via USB. All DVR's prepare and format their HDD's before they record and they allocate them with empty file templates,. That's because they have no time to do it while video is streaming and is compressed.

USB backup also has restrictions. I.e. its very likley that DVR wont recognize USB HDD unless its formatted in FAT32 file system. Yes, it also means that it can have maximum 32GB. If You have a larger HDD make a partition of that size.

[guy123 0]

You probably can record to a portable HDD (I've used one of those self powered USB HDD with my q-see units), however, it might be very slow, in particular if the USB is only Ver. 1.0, not Ver. 2.0. Also, some of these drives need a secondary power source since the USB port might not be able to provide enough juice to power the HDD.

 

Best bet is find out more specs. on your unit.

[yakky 0]

Both TFT and Dahua units I've had will only record to internal drives, there was no option to record to external. They only export to external drives.

[guy123 0]

My bad.

 

You can only backup to an external HDD, not record.