How long should you keep CCTV footage?

The question sounds like it belongs to the recorder, and it is usually answered by whatever hard disk happened to be in the box. It should be answered by how far back you realistically need to look.

What determines retention

Four things multiply together: the number of cameras, the resolution each records at, the compression the system uses, and the capacity of the disk. Change any one and the retention window moves.

As a working figure, a 1TB surveillance drive holds roughly sixty days of continuous 1080p footage across four cameras with H.265+ compression. Double the cameras and you halve the window. Move to 4MP and you halve it again.

How far back do people actually look?

In domestic settings, almost never past a fortnight. Something happens, you notice within a day or two, you review the footage. Thirty days is comfortable and sixty is generous.

In commercial settings the answer changes, because the incidents that matter are often discovered late. Stock discrepancies surface at inventory. Disputes surface when an invoice is challenged. Sixty to ninety days is the range most businesses land on once they have been through one incident.

Continuous or motion-triggered?

Motion recording stretches retention dramatically, and we generally advise against relying on it alone. Motion detection has a wake-up latency. The event that mattered often begins in the second before the trigger fired, and that second is exactly the one you wanted.

Continuous recording removes the question entirely. It costs storage, and storage is the cheapest component in the system.

The failure nobody plans for

A desktop hard disk in a surveillance recorder does not fail immediately. It fails eighteen months later, silently, and you discover it on the day you need the footage. Surveillance-grade drives are built for continuous sequential writes and for a duty cycle no desktop drive was designed to survive.

Check the drive health in the recorder interface every few months. It takes a minute and it is the only maintenance a CCTV system genuinely requires.