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How to enable external USB storage?

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Nx Support
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Sometimes people like to add USB storage for the main or backup recordings. By default, this is disabled since it has significant downsides, namely the read and write speeds of such storage are poor compared to an HDD. But if these downsides are taken into consideration, it might be useful to use USB storage drives within Nx Witness.

Note 1: Nx Witness will not allow recording to drives that are less than 10% the size of the largest drive in the system. This is done to ensure a correct write-ratio calculation and to improve overall system stability. For more information, please check this support article.

Note 2: In many cases, especially in larger systems, the throughput of many USB storage devices aren't sufficient for handling the data of a significant number of cameras and notifications like "Not enough HDD/SSD speed for recording to %drive_name%" are likely to occur. 

How to enable the USB storage option?

Follow the instructions below to grant the USB flash drive write access by setting the defaultRemovableDriveState parameter's value to write. The value read grants the drive read access and the value ignore makes the server ignore the mounted drive, preventing index files and archive folders from being generated.

For Windows: 

  1. Press Win+R
  2. Type regedit and press enter
  3. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Network Optix\Network Optix Media Server
  4. Right-click and select New and String Value 
  5. Give it the name: defaultRemovableDriveState
  6. Give it the value data of write
  7. Close Regedit
  8. Restart the server application via the task manager, tab Services and look for Network Optix Media Server and right-click and select Restart

For Linux: 

  1. Open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) on the server or, if you are on another device, log in via SSH with PuTTY or via the terminal. 
  2. Go to the following directory: cd /opt/networkoptix/mediaserver/etc
  3. Edit the file mediaserver.conf
    #sudo nano mediaserver.conf
  4. Add a new line defaultRemovableDriveState = "write"
  5. Save the file (Ctrl+O, click Enter)
  6. Exit the file (Ctrl+X)
  7. Restart the media server application
    # sudo systemctl restart networkoptix-mediaserver.service

Now when you open the Nx Desktop and go to Server Settings, you should be able to see the USB Storage under the tab Storage Management and you can use and treat it like any other storage option.

Questions

If you have any questions related to this topic or you want to share your experience with other community members or our team, please visit and engage in our support community or reach out to your local reseller. 

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