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Tips on keeping your DVR System healthy.

Physical Needs & Maintenance:

Be mindful of where the DVR is placed. Try to place it in an elevated space with space for ventilation, and avoid placing it on the floor if it can be avoided. If your DVR is in an environment that is particularly windy, dusty, or greasy (such as a kitchen), you will need to clean it more often to keep performance optimal.

It is a must that you have your DVR plugged into at least a Surge Protector to protect against power outages and surges. A Universal Power Supply performs this function as well as keeps your DVR running while your power is out. If you have a UPS, be sure to periodically check to see if the battery is still good.

Dust and grime in your DVR can seriously affect the performance of your machine. The presence of dust increases the internal temperature of the system, decreasing response time and slowing the system down, and can even cause shorts in the circuits. When the fans that keep your system cool become clogged, it can affect your power flow and could even fry the CPU. Check the inside of your DVR for dust once or twice a year, and clean it out with a can of compressed air.

If the system is going to be online:

Install either a hardware or software firewall and look into anti virus solutions as well. In addition to the necessary Anti virus, and/or Firewall's, periodically check windows updates, at least monthly on 'patch Tuesdays'(the second Tuesday of each month Microsoft Releases updates), and if there are updates waiting to be installed, install them.

Automatic Updates:

If Automatic updates is not enabled, it should be on all DVR's within the past year, it will ask you to turn on automatic updates, set it to automatically download and install patches around 7 or 8am, so your clients can ensure the updates were successful, AND it rebooted after updating.

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DVR Settings for Best Performance

--Set the passwords. So that normal users cannot exit the DVR software, or change any system settings.

--Configure the video compression, resolution and picture quality, to your preferred performance.

--If you know you have video on certain days but nothing shows, you should Refresh the Database, this can be found under Setup, on the standard tab, on the mid right hand side.

--For lowest disk space usage, set it to MPEG 4+ lower the resolution, and image quality. MJPEG uses the most disk space, but will result in better image quality.

--Configure the System to reboot regularly, about once a week. It is a computer, and uses up its resources.

--As the video data fills up the drive, it will impact system performance. Regularly format the video drive, and wipe out data that is old or un-needed anymore. After this, refresh the database, and reboot the system.