Milestone XProtect Express 2014 - Manual (Page 122)

Milestone XProtect ® Express 2014 Administrator's Manual
www.milestonesys.com 122 Advanced configuration
About archiving to other locations
When you archive to other locations than the default archiving directory, your system first temporarily
stores the archive in the local default archiving directory, then immediately moves the archive to the
archiving location you have specified. Archiving directly to a network drive can mean that archiving
time varies depending on the available bandwidth on the network. First storing the archive locally, then
moving it speeds up the archiving procedure, and reduces delays in case of network problems.
If you archive to a network drive, the regular camera database can only be stored on a local drive
attached directly to your system's server.
About dynamic archive paths
With dynamic archiving paths, you specify a number of different archiving paths, usually across
several drives. Milestone recommends using dynamic paths (see "Configure storage wizard" on page
44), which also is the default setting when you configure cameras through the Configure video &
recording wizard.
If the path containing the camera's database is on one of the drives you have selected for dynamic
archiving, your system always tries to archive to that drive first. If not, your system automatically
archives to the archiving drive with the most available space at any time, provided a camera database
is not using that drive.
The drive that has the most available space may change during the archiving process, and archiving
may happen to several archiving drives during the same process. This does not have impact on how
users find and view archived recordings.
Dynamic archiving paths are general for all your cameras. You cannot configure dynamic archiving
paths for individual cameras.
When deciding which drives to use for dynamic archiving, consider the pros and cons in the following
examples (in which we assume that the default archiving path is on drive C:
—drive letters are
examples only, different drive letters may of course be used in your organization):

Camera records to drive C: and archives to drive C:
If the path containing the camera's database is on one of the drives you have selected for
dynamic archiving, your system tries to archive to that drive first. Archiving takes place quickly,
but may also fill up the drive with data fairly quickly.

Camera records to drive C: and archives to drive D:
Recordings and archives are on separate drives. Archiving takes place less quickly. Your
system will first temporarily store the archive in the local default archiving directory on C:, then
immediately move the archive to the archiving location on D:. Therefore, you need sufficient
space to accommodate the temporary archive on C:.

Camera 1 records to drive C: and archives to drive D: while Camera 2 records to drive
D: and archives to drive C:
Avoid this. One camera's archiving may take up space required for another camera's
recordings. In the above example, Camera 1's archiving to D: may result in no recording space
for camera 2 on D:. The rule is: "Do not cross recording and archiving drives."•
If you use several surveillance servers in a master/slave setup, each surveillance server must archive
to its own mapped location in order for archiving to work. If you attempt to archive to the same mapped
location for all the servers, archiving fails.