Lorex N842-set number of days of recordings to keep?

So it probably doesn't have as many days on it as you think and is actively recording over the oldest files.
 
wittaj said:
So it probably doesn't have as many days on it as you think and is actively recording over the oldest files.
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That's pretty much impossible. 8 cameras recording with a bitrate of 768 should use (very) roughly 60 GB per 24 hours. That gives me almost 100 days of recording (without accounting for filesystem overhead), so the 89 days estimate it gives me is correct.

How does no one find it odd that it is exactly 30 days of recording that it allows you to access. That to me points to a software limitation, but I can't find any documentation to indicate so.
 
And yet the drive is full...

Obviously something else is going on.

Pull the drive and connect to a computer and see what the oldest file on the drive is...I bet it doesn't go back to June or July.
 
I believe that little white box is considered a lite series NVR from Dahua so it is possible there is some limitation, but I would want to know for sure and would pull the drive and see what the oldest file is or reformat it and watch it everyday and make sure it is filling like you think it should.
 
wittaj said:
I believe that little white box is considered a lite series NVR from Dahua so it is possible there is some limitation, but I would want to know for sure and would pull the drive and see what the oldest file is or reformat it and watch it everyday and make sure it is filling like you think it should.
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I'll have to arrange with the client to grab the hard drive, so I probably won't have an answer for you until tomorrow at the earliest.
 
Terranq said:
If you're being sarcastic, I'm not amused.

If you're not, sorry, reading @Flintstone61 comments first thing this morning put me in a sour mood.

Bit rate is at 768 (lowered it to 500 this morning to see if that makes a difference). Storage estimator now says 100 days instead of 89. So why only 30 days available if you look at past recordings? Is it a software limitation? But I don't see anything in the documentation to indicate that.

Despite what some people on here seem to think, I'm not a complete moron and covered all the basic steps. I'm wondering if there's a limitation I'm not aware of, or if there is a weirdly placed/labelled setting that I need to tweak/enable to get more that 30 days of recordings stored.
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Not being sarcastic ..

I honestly do not know what else to try besides asking Lorex Support .. and hoping to get a good tech online ..
 
Sorry to annoy you first thing....I was pointing to the customer, the User, of the NVR,,,Eventually these systems need to be managed by someone other than the installer......
I looked on my Amcrest ( dahua OEM) and there even less available menu items...concerning HDD storage length...
It seems strange that they would have a default of 30 days.
If it is true, your gonna have to go up to an NVR version with better features. Not what anybody wants to deal with,,,hopefully you get it resolved....
I'm so sick of the NVR limitations..... I have resorted to duplicating the storage to Blue iris so that i have full control.
But for my Fresh off the Boat folks in my family...all they think they need is to view their cams from an App so they can Parade around impressing their friends. They have very little English, and even less computer skills
The Amcrest App is what I need to keep them happy.
But It's never gonna be enough for me..
 
Flintstone61 said:
Sorry to annoy you first thing....I was pointing to the customer, the User, of the NVR,,,Eventually these systems need to be managed by someone other than the installer......
I looked on my Amcrest ( dahua OEM) and there even less available menu items...concerning HDD storage length...
It seems strange that they would have a default of 30 days.
If it is true, your gonna have to go up to an NVR version with better features. Not what anybody wants to deal with,,,hopefully you get it resolved....
I'm so sick of the NVR limitations..... I have resorted to duplicating the storage to Blue iris so that i have full control.
But for my Fresh off the Boat folks in my family...all they think they need is to view their cams from an App so they can Parade around impressing their friends. They have very little English, and even less computer skills
The Amcrest App is what I need to keep them happy.
But It's never gonna be enough for me..
Click to expand...

Sorry for going off, I'm getting frazzled trying to figure this out, and I took it personally. My bad. I'm pretty sure that this is a limitation of the NVR at this point, but I'll try to pull the hard drive and see what's on it.
 
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OK, got the hard drive and mounted it on my PC (need Dahua Disk Manager to read it). Today is October 31st, and the oldest recording is September 30th. There must be a software limitation, because there is NO WAY that takes up 6 TB of storage.
 
But if the drive is full and only has 30 days of storage, then it is taking up that entire drive in some form or fashion.

Either there is a setting that is using way more than the estimator shows or maybe the drive is formatted with too large of sectors (or cluster size) and it is basically wasting a ton of storage space.

Are snapshots happening? That would be one way that it would completely blow the cluster size out of the water. For example, if the drive is formatted for 2048K and a snapshot is 20K, then you are losing 2028K of that cluster. That will add up quickly.

If they are ok with it, I would reformat it and then watch the drive capacity and see if it is using it up faster than the estimator says.
 
wittaj said:
But if the drive is full and only has 30 days of storage, then it is taking up that entire drive in some form or fashion.

Either there is a setting that is using way more than the estimator shows or maybe the drive is formatted with too large of sectors (or cluster size) and it is basically wasting a ton of storage space.

Are snapshots happening? That would be one way that it would completely blow the cluster size out of the water. For example, if the drive is formatted for 2048K and a snapshot is 20K, then you are losing 2028K of that cluster. That will add up quickly.

If they are ok with it, I would reformat it and then watch the drive capacity and see if it is using it up faster than the estimator says.
Click to expand...

Ended up calling Lorex "tech" support, and yeah, not helpful at all. I'm going to do what you suggested and see if they are all right with reformatting the hard drive and going from there.

When I installed the 6 TB hard drive it formatted it-as far as I remember there are no options for cluster size, etc, and from looking through the menus I don't remember any snapshot settings.

I'm 99% sure at this point it's a software limitation. With a 2 TB Hard drive it showed 30 days of recordings. With a 6 TB drive it shows 30 days of recordings, no matter how low you set resolution or bitrate.
 
Certainly weird as the write-up on it says it can take up to a 10TB drive.

The drive being full is what is weird though.
 
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