Choosing a UniFi Protect recorder: storage, retention and what to have ready for your insurer
How to size a UniFi Protect recorder so the footage you need still exists after a break-in, and how to show your insurer, landlord or the police that it does.
The footage that wasn’t there
Illustration, not a real event: a Hudson Valley dental office is broken into over a long weekend. The owner opens the camera app on Tuesday and finds nine days of recordings, but the camera covering the back door shows a gray “no recording” bar for the night in question. The single hard drive in the recorder had failed a week earlier. Nobody noticed, because nobody was told to look.
That outcome has three common causes, and all of them are design decisions made on the day the system goes in:
- Retention was never set. Left on automatic, a recorder keeps footage until the disk is full and then deletes the oldest. How many days you actually have depends on camera count, resolution and motion, not on what anyone intended.
- One drive, no redundancy. A single disk is a single point of failure for every camera.
- The recorder sits where a burglar can carry it out. A recorder on the reception desk is evidence that leaves with the thief.
Why it happens
Cameras are the visible part of the purchase, so they get the attention. The recorder is chosen by price, filled with whatever drive was on hand and never revisited. Nobody writes down how long footage must be kept, so nobody can check whether the system does it.
The design that prevents it
SMC’s preferred platform for small-business video is UniFi Protect. It records locally on hardware you own, Ubiquiti says it cannot view your video streams, and Protect carries no licensing fees (Getting Started with UniFi Protect; How UniFi Protect Protects Your Data). Where a business already runs another system that works, SMC designs around that instead.
1. Size the recorder with headroom
Pick a recorder that handles today’s cameras plus the ones you will add in the next few years. Ubiquiti’s store listed these Protect recorders on October 29, 2026 (list prices in US dollars; the store also shows a higher “surcharge incl.” figure, and prices change):
| Recorder | Model | Cameras (4K / Full HD) | Drive bays | Listed price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Network Video Recorder Instant | UNVR-Instant | 6 / 15, with a built-in 6-port PoE switch | 3.5” drive support | $199 |
| Network Video Recorder | UNVR | 18 / 60 | 4 | $299 |
| Network Video Recorder Pro | UNVR-Pro | 24 / 70 | 7 | $499 |
| Network Video Recorder G2 | UNVR-G2 | 30 / 60 | 4 | $699 |
| Network Video Recorder G2 Pro | UNVR-G2-Pro | 50 / 100 | 8 | $999 |
| Enterprise NVR | ENVR | 70 / 210 | 16 | $1,999 |
A small office with six to ten cameras usually fits a four-bay recorder. Choose more bays than you need on day one: bays are what let you add redundancy and retention later without replacing the box.
2. Decide retention in writing, then set it
Write down how many days of footage you need and why: an insurer’s or landlord’s requirement, a contract, or simply how long it takes your business to notice a problem (a closed-over-the-holidays office needs more than a 24-hour shop). Then set it in Protect rather than leaving it on automatic.
Protect gives you tools to stretch the disk:
- Enhanced Retention (Protect 5.1 and later) keeps recent footage at full resolution for a period you choose, then keeps older footage at lower quality. Ubiquiti notes that downgraded footage cannot be restored to high quality (Managing Storage and Retention).
- Recording modes and schedules. Each camera can record Always, Detection Only or Never, and schedules can limit recording to set hours (Recording Modes & Schedules). Low-activity areas on Detection Only free space for the cameras that matter.
- Super Encoding, introduced in Protect 7.3, is applied across cameras to extend recording history without more storage, according to Ubiquiti (Introducing Protect 7.3, October 5, 2026).
Then check the result. Protect’s Storage Manager shows how storage is used; compare the oldest recording on each camera with the number you wrote down.
3. Protect against a failed drive
Use at least two drives. On UNVR and ENVR recorders, Ubiquiti’s “Basic Protection” mirrors two drives and uses RAID 5 with three or more, surviving one drive failure; on an ENVR with nine or more drives it uses RAID 6, surviving two; “Better Performance” (RAID 10) needs an even number of at least four drives and keeps half the raw capacity (Storage Protection and Data Redundancy). Use drives that meet Ubiquiti’s guidance: CMR, 7200 RPM, with 5400 RPM drives not recommended in multi-bay RAID (Storage Requirements and Compatibility).
Redundancy only helps if someone sees the warning. Send drive and recorder alerts to two named people, not to an installer’s inbox.
4. Put the recorder where a thief won’t find it
Locked closet or rack, on a battery backup, out of camera view of the public. If the building has a second secure room, that is a better home than the front office.
5. Make the footage usable as evidence
- Evidence enrollment (Protect 7.2 and later) fingerprints each clip with SHA-256 and signs it, so a downloaded recording can be checked at evidence.ui.com; altered files are flagged. Enrollment needs no license (Evidence Authenticity and Visible Watermarks).
- Export, archive or put in a case any footage you must keep. Retention settings will otherwise delete it in time; flagging a clip only stops it being downgraded to low quality. Protect’s Case Manager can hold footage indefinitely (Managing Storage and Retention).
- Name who may export footage, and keep a short log of what was exported, when and to whom.
What to have ready for your insurer, landlord or the police
You will be asked some version of these. Know the answers before you need them:
- How many days of footage does each camera keep, and where is that written down?
- What happens if a drive fails? Who gets the alert?
- Where is the recorder, and is it on battery backup?
- Who can view and export footage, and how do you show a clip hasn’t been altered?
Checklist
- Recorder sized for current cameras plus planned growth, with spare bays
- Retention target written down with its reason
- Retention set per camera in Protect; oldest recording checked against the target
- At least two drives with Basic Protection or better; drives meet Ubiquiti’s guidance
- Drive and recorder alerts go to two named people
- Recorder in a locked space on battery backup
- Evidence enrollment on; export procedure and log in place
When to get help
SMC assesses the site, designs the UniFi system and writes the specification; a licensed installer you contract with does the installation, and SMC reviews the bid and checks the finished system against the specification. SMC doesn’t sell equipment or take commissions. UniFi is our preferred platform; if you already run a system that fits your business, we work with that.
Start with the free security assessment at https://www.securitymedic.com/assessment. Physical security questions are covered there and on a free 30-minute call. You get a gap report to keep and a free results review to go through it together.
Sources
- Ubiquiti Help Center, Getting Started with UniFi Protect, updated October 9, 2026.
- Ubiquiti Help Center, How UniFi Protect Protects Your Data, updated September 8, 2026.
- Ubiquiti Help Center, Managing Storage and Retention in UniFi Protect, updated September 28, 2026.
- Ubiquiti Help Center, UniFi Protect Recording Modes & Schedules, updated October 21, 2026.
- Ubiquiti Help Center, Storage Protection and Data Redundancy in UniFi (RAID), updated October 12, 2026.
- Ubiquiti Help Center, UniFi Storage Requirements and Compatibility, updated October 28, 2026.
- Ubiquiti Help Center, UniFi Protect: Evidence Authenticity and Visible Watermarks, updated September 19, 2026.
- Ubiquiti blog, Introducing Protect 7.3, October 5, 2026.
- Ubiquiti Store, Cameras and NVRs and the product pages for UNVR Instant, UNVR, UNVR Pro, UNVR G2, UNVR G2 Pro and ENVR: camera capacity, drive bays and US list prices as shown October 29, 2026. Prices change.