HDD Size Limit? Lorex NVR

JessieO

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I have a Lorex LNK71082T NVR that came with a 2TB surveillance drive built in. I'm looking to bump up the HDD, and I have a line on a good deal for a 16TB Toshiba Enterprise SATA drive - perfect size for keeping the number of days of recording that I'd like.

The problem I'm looking for help with is whether or not the NVR will support a drive this big. The max drive size indicated on Lorex's website varies - some places say 6TB max while other places on their site say 8TB. Add into the mix a review from a guy who said he popped in a 10TB with no problems, and, well, I'm not quite convinced that the stated limit is a hard limit.

Anyone have any experience with upgrading drives in Lorex NVRs/DVRs past their stated limit? Also, does anyone know the filesystem that Lorex boxes usually use? ExFAT? Ext3? Even if the drive doesn't work by plugging (and playing), I could always format the drive myself in a different system or duplicate the partition table from the existing 2TB.

I'm not totally set on keeping this NVR as I may switch over to Blue Iris, so I'd like to not compromise and get a smaller drive just to suit an NVR that I might be getting rid of anyway.
 

Flintstone61

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does your menu have this?
12.4.3 Enabling eSATA Recording
Enable eSATA recording to use external hard drives for recording video.
To enable eSATA recording:
1. Under Device, click HDD to open the HDD tab.
2. Select Enable from the dropdown next to Record On ESATA.
3. Click Save
 

Flintstone61

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yeah the owners manual says 6TB....16Tb is an expensive drive. I suppose once you unpackage it they dont want it back.
 
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JessieO

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I would assume that my NVR does not have the eSATA option in the menus. The NVR is sealed into a location that isn't easily accessible, so I cannot verify via the on-device menu, but when connected via the Lorex client, there is no mention of eSATA under the Device -> Storage. Along with that, it doesn't have an eSATA port on the front or back, so...
 

mat200

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I have a Lorex LNK71082T NVR that came with a 2TB surveillance drive built in. I'm looking to bump up the HDD, and I have a line on a good deal for a 16TB Toshiba Enterprise SATA drive - perfect size for keeping the number of days of recording that I'd like.

The problem I'm looking for help with is whether or not the NVR will support a drive this big. The max drive size indicated on Lorex's website varies - some places say 6TB max while other places on their site say 8TB. Add into the mix a review from a guy who said he popped in a 10TB with no problems, and, well, I'm not quite convinced that the stated limit is a hard limit.

Anyone have any experience with upgrading drives in Lorex NVRs/DVRs past their stated limit? Also, does anyone know the filesystem that Lorex boxes usually use? ExFAT? Ext3? Even if the drive doesn't work by plugging (and playing), I could always format the drive myself in a different system or duplicate the partition table from the existing 2TB.

I'm not totally set on keeping this NVR as I may switch over to Blue Iris, so I'd like to not compromise and get a smaller drive just to suit an NVR that I might be getting rid of anyway.

FYI - based on the compatibility chart at lorex this NVR does not appear to be a Dahua OEM NVR


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JessieO

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I ordered the drive today - a Toshiba MG08ACA16TE. I'll report back with my findings once I receive and install it.
 

JessieO

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Success! I pulled out the 2TB drive that came with the NVR (a Western Digital 2TB Purple drive) and replaced it with a 16TB drive (a Toshiba MG08ACA16TE Enterprise SATA drive). The NVR booted just fine, and then it showed a popup saying that the drive was not formatted.

I tried to format it remotely using the Lorex 13 client, and it would get to about 30% before causing the NVR to reboot, and when it came back up, the drive was still unformatted. I tried this twice with no luck, so then I tried formatting it using the interface on the device itself (plugged into a monitor via HDMI and using the included USB mouse). This took a few minutes, and it completed successfully.

The entire 16TB capacity was recognized by the NVR, and it has been recording just fine since the drive swap. I wont know if there are any issues with the recording going past the 6TB mark for about 12 days, but I doubt there will be any issues.

On a side note, I plugged the old drive into my Windows PC to see what was on it, but the only recognized partition was not recognized as formatted. I then plugged the drive into my Linux box, and I found a 50GB partition at the end of the partition table (I'm guessing it was Ext3 formatted, but I didn't check) containing jpeg thumbnails of all of the recorded video segments. The first 1950GB (or whatever 2TB minus 50GiB is) of the drive, on the other hand, was shown as blank unpartitioned space. I'm guessing this means that it writes the video directly to the drive in a raw format. This'd be something to keep in mind if you ever need to recover video from the drive itself without the NVR available - it'll be difficult.

Additionally, the board inside had three SATA ports but only space for one drive (screw holes for both 2.5" and 3.5" drives in the bay). I'm guessing this same board is used for the 16-channel and 32-channel models (with a different firmware) and the one of the other SATA ports is used for the second drive while the other SATA port is wired to an eSATA port on the back. I'm not sure if they are usable with the firmware that comes on the 8-channel (mine). I also had to mount the drive backwards compared to the included drive as the screw hole placement did not leave enough room to plug in the drive cables.

So, TLDR: The stated 6TB drive size limit for the Lorex LNK71082T NVR (included with the LNK71082T8KB bundle) in the manual and on Lorex's website is untrue, and I was able to get a 16TB drive working. However, you need to format the drive directly on the device and NOT remotely using the Lorex client.
 

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