What Kind of Hard Drive Will Work in a Zmodo DVR?
In a Zmodo DVR, you can use almost any hard drive that uses the SATA interface. You will want to follow the basic requirements when choosing which hard drive though.
Requirements:
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SATA II or SATA III interface
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Storage capacity of at least 250GB and no more than 2TB. See our Storage Calculator to determine exactly how much you need.
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Choose a hard drive with a physical size of 3.5". It may also be reffered to as a desktop sized hard drive.
There aren't too many actual requirements for a hard drive to work, however for the absolute best results, please follow our additional recommendations.
Recommendations:
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Choose a hard drive that spins at 5400RPMS because these hard drives use less power and also produce less heat.
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Choose a hard drive that is rated as industrial/surveillance grade because a standard, PC grade hard drive will fail quickly in a DVR system.
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Use a hard drive with 16MB of cache or more.
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There are two hard drives that meet all of the requirements and recommendations and they are the Western Digital AV-GP line of hard drives and the Seagate Pipeline line of hard drives.
Warnings:
- Stay away from using Western Digital Caviar Black hard drives. They have higher power requirements and create much more heat.
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Do not use a Solid State drive (SSD) in the DVR. The constant writing of the drive will wear the drive out much faster than a traditional hard drive.
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Do not use an external hard drive that hooks up through USB. The USB interface does not allow live recording.