Easy way to back up whole DVR HDD???

[redjay 0]

I have a Supercircuits Black DVR model H.264 with 16 cameras. 4 cameras are recording continuously the rest are motion activated. I think the frames/ sec has been set to 4, but Im not positive.

The HDD is holding on average two months of video. I am being asked to find a way to store the video, even if its on another device, for two years.

I am trying to do this without replacing the whole system.

I called Supercircuits, their first option was to use an external USB drive to backup the video. I found that the external HDD are not compatible. After telling Supercircuits this they told me to save it to a flash drive then move it to the external drive.

After trying the flash drive I found that the DVR will not allow me to back up more that 60 minutes at a time, no matter how large the flash drive.

I tried on my own using the remote client software to save the video directly to a computer. I am able to save 24 hours at a time this way.

I called Supercircuits back again and they kept telling me I can backup the whole DVR using USB. I finally got the tech to try to backup a DVR himself and he agreed it can not backup the whole DVR.

The tech's last suggestion was to remove the hard drive and clone it.

The only way I see to clone this drive is to shut down the DVR every two months, remove the HDD, plug it into a cloning device, then put it back together.

I have found cloners for about $150. I would need 12 HDDs to save two years so that would be a total of around $2,000. And I would have to remove the HDD every 2 months.

I am not considering this as an option.

There has to be a better way to back up the video.

[Daryl733 0]

From the way you are using your DVR, the easiest way is to replace the HDD once it's full and keep the old harddisk in storage.

 

Check if there are player that you can use to playback the removed hdd, otherwise if it's important enough, you may want to get another same model DVR as a backup to playback the recording in the future.

You'll have to be careful about the handling of the HDD. There's a reason why DVR nowadays no longer comes with removable hdd rack, unlike those 10 years back.

 

The UI design of most DVR is for you to backup incidents. Not to copy the HDD wholesale.

 

The DVR is running 24x7 recording video. Doing backup concurrently incurred a lot of overhead.

 

The better way to do it is to look for a system that can accommodate enough HDD so that these are done seamlessly.

You did not mentioned the size of your HDD. Currently the maximum size of HDD is 8TB. But not all DVR support it.

 

There are also system that support NAS recording. In theory, these can be scale up to unlimited size depending on equipment you use.

 

$150 cloners are way too expensive....... But then again, different locality.