Every security camera you add is a constant stream of video landing on a drive, and the drive fills on a schedule you can calculate. Enter your cameras below to see how much storage your retention target needs, which drive size fits, or how many days a drive you already own will hold.
Bitrate fills in with a typical default for the resolution and codec. If you know your camera’s real setting, type it in; it is the number that matters.
- Total bitrate—
- Written per day—
- Days your own drive holds—
How the numbers work
A camera recording at a bitrate of 1 megabit per second writes 0.125 megabytes every second, which is 10.8 GB per day. Everything else is multiplication: bitrate times cameras times the share of the day being recorded times the number of days you keep. The drive recommendation adds room so the drive never runs past about 85% full, which keeps the filesystem healthy and leaves space for clips and snapshots.
Frigate saves the stream you assign to its record role without re-encoding it, so the camera’s own bitrate setting is exactly what lands on disk. If the disk gets within about an hour of full, Frigate deletes the oldest recordings regardless of your retention setting. An undersized drive will not crash it; it quietly shortens how far back you can look. Most setups record the high-resolution main stream and run object detection on the low-resolution substream, which is why only the main stream counts here. Dedicated NVRs from Reolink, Amcrest, UniFi and others work the same way.
Typical default bitrates used
| Resolution | H.264 | H.265 |
|---|---|---|
| 720p (1MP) | 2 Mbps | 1 Mbps |
| 1080p (2MP) | 4 Mbps | 2 Mbps |
| 1440p (4MP) | 6 Mbps | 3 Mbps |
| 5MP | 8 Mbps | 4 Mbps |
| 4K (8MP) | 12 Mbps | 6 Mbps |
These are common factory defaults, not fixed rules. Frame rate, scene detail and night-time noise all move the real number, so check the bitrate in your camera’s video settings and type it in for an exact answer. Switching a camera from H.264 to H.265 can cut its storage by up to about half, as long as your NVR or Frigate hardware can decode it.
Continuous or events only?
Events-only recording stores far less, but the activity percentage is a guess until you have a week of real footage. A quiet backyard might record 5% of the day; a camera facing a street can sit above 40%. Many people record 24/7 for a few days and keep motion clips for longer, so run the calculator twice and add the two results.
Related guides
- The complete Frigate NVR setup: hardware and accelerators
- Best PoE NVR security camera systems
- Are recertified hard drives worth it for a NAS?
- Best 4-bay NAS enclosures, for when one drive is not enough
The drive button above is an Amazon affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate, HomeNode earns from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.
Estimates are for planning only. Real storage use depends on your cameras’ settings and scenes; check actual usage after a few days of recording.