Milestone XProtect Essential 2014 - Manual (Page 121)

Milestone XProtect ® Essential 2014 Administrator's Manual
www.milestonesys.com 121 Advanced configuration
When you archive, XProtect Essential automatically checks that space required for the data to be
archived plus 1 GB of free disk space per camera is available at the archiving location. If not, the
archive location's oldest data from the camera in question is deleted until there is sufficient free space
for the new data to be archived.
When you estimate storage capacity required for archiving, consider your organization's needs, then
plan for worst case rather than best case scenarios.
You cannot archive to external drives, only to local drives on the system server.
Tip: The Storage Calculator in the Support section of the Milestone website can help you determine
the storage capacity required for your surveillance system.
Automatic response if running out of disk space
If your system runs of disk space while archiving, you can set up an automatic response. Two
scenarios can occur, depending on whether the camera database drive is different from, or identical
to, the archiving drive:
Same drive: Automatic moving or deletion of archives if drive runs out of disk space
If your system server is running out of disk space, and the archiving drive is identical to the camera
database drive, your system automatically does a number of attempts to free up space. Most of these
attempts will result in the loss of your data from archives or databases.

First, the system attempts to move archives. You can only move archives if you use dynamic
archiving, with which you can archive to several different drives. This happens if:
o there is less than 15% disk space left, and the available disk space goes below 40 GB plus
2 GB per camera
- or -
o the available disk space goes below 225 MB plus 30 MB per camera. Example: with ten
cameras, the server would be running out of disk space if the remaining available disk
space went below 525 MB (225 MB plus 30 MB for each of the ten cameras).
The difference ensures that very large disks are not necessarily considered to be running out
of disk space just because they have less than 15% disk space left.

If the system cannot move archives, your system attempts to delete the oldest archives. This
happens if:
o there is less than 10% disk space left, and the available disk space goes below 30 GB plus
1.5 GB per camera
- or -
o the available disk space goes below 150 MB plus 20 MB per camera (example: with ten
cameras, the server would be running out of disk space if the remaining available disk
space went below 350 MB (150 MB plus 20 MB for each of the ten cameras))
The difference ensures that very large disks not necessarily are considered to be running out
of disk space just because they have less than 10% disk space left.