22. How can I tell if a microSD card or USB disk drive will work with ZapperBox? How many GB is required for storing a one hour video?

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ZapperBox requires a minimum drive size of 128GB for DVR. HD and 4K recordings require about 5GB/hour and 1080p recordings require about 2.2GB/hour. This means that a 1TB drive can store 200 hours of HD or 4K video and about 450 hours of 1080p video.

All hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid sate drives (SSDs) that we have tested work with ZapperBox primarily because we use Android. However, The M1 has one USB 3.0 port that provides us to 4.5 watts and one USB 2.0 port that provides up to 2.5 watts. The m2 has one USB 2.0 port. Many hard drives and SSDs are designed to require a peak power close or equal to this maximum and will not work unless you use an external power hub. 

As a rule of thumb we have found that most HDDs do NOT work without external power and most SSDs do work without external power. We have tested a few different USB powered hubs and they all work fine. Here is one that is Amazon’s Choice.

microSD cards and cheap thumb drives have a “burnout” problem unless the 60-minute pause buffer is disabled. We have not experienced such problems with SSD (solid state drives) yet. Read about it in this blog post. If you use a microSD card or a thumb drive please ensure that its read speed is rated at 150 MBytes/second or higher. We have found two Flash Thumb Drives (marked with * below) with read speeds rates at 400 MBytes/second that seem to support the continuous pause buffer even after 6 months of testing.

Here is a list of drives that we have purchased and used successfully with the ZapperBox:


Seagate 1TB HDD (requires external power): https://amzn.to/4nQGp3e 

Seagate 4TB HDD (requires external power): https://amzn.to/4ozJ6Y3 

Seagate 8TB HDD: https://amzn.to/47SEF3z 

Seagate 14TB HDD: https://amzn.to/4qXR5je 

SanDisk 512GB Thumb Drive*: https://amzn.to/49mzR97 

SanDisk 1TB Thumb Drive*: https://amzn.to/47VGsVA 

Western Digital 1TB SSD: https://amzn.to/47YuZEF 

SanDisk 2TB Portable SSD: https://amzn.to/47B0tSo 

SanDisk 1TB Ultra microSD card: https://amzn.to/4p7mKwP 

SanDisk 512GB Ultra microSD card: https://amzn.to/4829RO2 

SanDisk 256GB Ultra microSD card: https://amzn.to/4nYdWIX 

Samsung Endurance Pro 256GB: https://amzn.to/4oCbCrZ 

Amazon basics 128GB microSD card: https://amzn.to/4oCedlJ 


You can select from four types of storage media. Whatever you choose, please consider high end storage made by known brands like SanDisk, Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung, etc.

1. microSD cards. These are the most convenient and most expensive per GB. The entire card slips inside the microSD slot and completely out of sight. It is like having internal storage inside the ZapperBox. As of January 2024, the largest available microSD card is 1.5 TB. We recommend that the 60-minute pause buffer be disabled when using microSD cards. This will ensure that the cards last for a long time. In one experiment a 512GB microSD card made by SanDisk lasted 5 months with the extended pause buffer turned on.

2. Flash drives or USB thumb drives. These tend to be less expensive but are usually designed for removable storage and not continuous writing. We recommend that the 60-minute pause buffer be disabled when using thumb drives unless you use a drive with a read speed of 400 MBytes/s or higher. Two such drives made by SanDisk are listed above. Their compact form factor makes them more attractive than microSD cards because unlike microSD cards they can support the 60-minute pause buffer.

3. SSDs (solid state drives). SSDs use flash storage like microSD cards and thumb drives but are designed to offer higher performance and more robustness than thumb drives. 

4. HDDs (hard disk drives). HDDs offer the cheapest storage option per GB. They typically require an external power source with the ZapperBox, which can only provide 4.5W of power on the USB 3.0 port and 2.5W on the USB 2.0 port. 

Since the USB ports on the ZapperBox are on the side, and not the rear, you can consider using a right-angle USB adapter like this one.
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