Recently while testing compatibilities with other VMS solutions while using QNAP NAS as other VMS’s external storage, I noticed that the storage is not reclaimed after the retention happens inside the VMS.
After checks, this is because the “Recycle Bin” feature has been enabled by default. Files deleted by VMS via Samba are moved to the recycle bin, and the space is not actually freed for further use.
As a best practice, I will suggest creating a standalone shared folder dedicated to those incoming recording files. Ensure the “Recycle Bin” options and “Snapshot” options are disabled from the control panel because they did not help in the scenario of saving recording files.
In order to avoid confusion, my VMS here means “Video Management System” recording service from Milestone Xprotect, Hikvision, or Nx Witness… etc.
Running “Virtual Machines” should have no problem at all anyway.
And True, the VMS usually saves recordings as .mkv/.ts/.mp4 so excluding these media file extensions from the recycle bin also works if you have to mix everything in one shared folder.
However, from my experience, separating them into an independent volume/shared folder is better because the surveillance services utilize disks differently:
It keeps writing operations so disks change all the time. Causing snapshots/versioning meaningless.
The contents are media files are rarely duplicated and unable to be compressed effectively.
By separating these into standalone folders/volumes, I can ensure the proper policy can be applied without influencing other stuff.
