Security camera maintenance: a checklist, and how to catch a dead camera before you need the video

The recorder keeps running when a camera stops working. One tile on the screen goes black or shows an old picture, and nobody is looking at it. A hard disk can fail while the cameras still look fine. A clock can drift, so the time on a clip is wrong. The system looks healthy until the day you need a clip.

So maintenance is mostly checking. Four questions cover it. Can every camera see? Is every camera recording? Is the disk healthy? Is the time right? The sections below take them one at a time, then give a simple schedule.

Dirt, cobwebs, water spots and glare on the lens or dome make the picture worse. Clean it when it needs it, with a soft, clean cloth. Axis, in the documentation for its dome cameras, says to use a non-abrasive, solvent-free neutral soap or detergent mixed with pure water, rinse with pure lukewarm water and dry with a soft cloth to prevent water spotting. It says never to use harsh detergents, gasoline, benzene, acetone or similar chemicals, to avoid cleaning in direct sunlight, never to polish the dome or lens, and not to clean a dome or lens that already looks clean, because excessive cleaning could damage the surface. Other makers give different advice, so check your camera's manual.

Look at the view too. A shelf, a sign, a plant or a new fixture can block what a camera was put there to see. A loose bracket lets a camera sag or turn. Fix what costs nothing, such as moving the shelf or re-aiming the camera, and for high cameras use a proper ladder or ask your installer.

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The hard disk is the part that wears out. Seagate says a regular desktop drive is designed for intermittent use, not continuous 24/7 operation, and does not recommend one for surveillance. Our hard disk guide explains how to choose a disk and work out how many days it holds.

• Check the disk status in the recorder's menu. Dahua's recorder manual shows each disk in the storage screen and marks a damaged disk with a question mark. Its disk detect screen (Setting, Storage, HDD Detect, Manual Detect in that manual) shows a detect result and S.M.A.R.T. information, which is the disk's own health report. Menu names differ by brand and version.
• Check how many days you really have. Open playback and find the oldest day with video. If you expected 30 days and have 9, the disk is full, the settings changed, or something is recording more than it should.
• Turn on the recorder's own disk warnings. Dahua's manual lists disk error, no disk and no space as events, with a threshold you set for low space. A warning on the recorder only helps if someone sees or hears it, so set it up to notify you if your recorder can.
• Note the date each disk was installed, so you know its age. Replace a disk that shows errors rather than waiting.
• Shut the recorder down from its menu, not by pulling the power. Dahua's manual warns that shutting down improperly may cause a disk malfunction.
• Keep the recorder cool. Dahua's manual says to brush dust off the recorder regularly, keep it away from direct sunlight and other heat sources, and keep it well ventilated. If that means opening the case, ask your installer.

A wrong clock makes a clip hard to use and hard to match with other records. Once a month, compare the recorder's time with your phone. Most recorders can set the time from the internet. Dahua's manual describes an NTP setting on its Date and Time screen, where you choose the time server, port and interval, and a separate daylight saving setting. It notes that system time is very important and that you should stop recording before you change it by hand.

If the picture has a time stamp burned into it, check that against the recorder's time too.

Firmware is the software inside a camera or recorder. The US cybersecurity agency CISA, passing on advice from the UK National Cyber Security Centre, tells owners of internet-connected cameras to change default passwords, keep software up to date and turn off remote access they do not use. Dahua's manual likewise recommends keeping recorder and camera firmware up to date for the latest security fixes.

• Get firmware only from the maker's own website, for your exact model.
• Update at a quiet time. A camera or recorder may stop recording while it restarts.
• If the maker no longer issues updates for a device, treat that as a reason to plan a replacement, even if it still records.
• Remove accounts for people who have left, and write the logins down somewhere safe.

Live view shows what a camera sees right now. It does not prove that the recorder is saving it. Test the recording, not the live view.

• 1. Open playback on the recorder and pick yesterday.
• 2. For each camera, jump to three times: morning, afternoon and night.
• 3. Check that there is video at each time and that the picture is usable. Many recorders mark the days and hours that have video on a calendar or timeline, so a gap shows up as a hole.
• 4. If a camera records only on motion, check that it caught real movement. If it records on a schedule, check that the schedule covers nights and weekends.
• 5. Export one clip to a USB drive and play it on another computer. Do it now, not the day someone asks for a clip.

Here is what a bad camera looks like on a screen full of tiles.

• A black tile. The camera has lost power or its network connection.
• A frozen tile. The picture does not change and a burned-in clock, if there is one, is not moving.
• A dark or blocked picture. Tape, paint, a bag, a hat or a spider web over the lens. A covered camera is still working, so the recorder may show a normal tile with a useless picture.
• A picture that points at the ceiling or the wall. Someone turned the camera, or the mount slipped.
• A camera missing from the recorder's channel list.

Many recorders can raise an alarm for these problems. Dahua's manual lists four kinds of detection: motion detection, video loss, tampering and scene change, plus events for disk and network problems. Other makers have similar settings, usually in an event or alarm menu.

Check how the alarm reaches you. Often it is an icon on the recorder's own screen or a beep at the recorder. That helps only if someone is standing next to it, so test whether the recorder can send a notification to your phone, and test the alarm itself by covering a camera for a minute. Once a month, also walk the area at night with a camera's picture open on your phone and check that it sees you.

This works for many sites. Do more often where cameras are outdoors, dusty or heavily used.

• Every week, five minutes: look at every camera on live view, and play back yesterday from two or three cameras, rotating which ones.
• Every month: check the disk status and the days of video, compare the clock with your phone, look through the recorder's alarm log, and export a test clip.
• Every quarter: clean the lenses and domes that need it, check mounts, cables and the view, check for firmware updates, and remove old accounts.
• Every year: replace anything near the end of its life, and walk the site at dusk and at night with each camera on your phone to check that it still sees what it was put there to see.

A checklist depends on a person remembering. Our software watches your cameras all day. Two of its standard warnings fit this problem: we tell you when a camera has been covered, and when a camera goes offline. That catches a covered lens, a camera that lost power or its network connection, and a camera that was unplugged, without anyone looking at a screen.

They do not replace the checklist. A dirty lens, a failing disk and a drifting clock are not on that list, so the checks above are still yours to do.

Our software runs on a Windows computer at your site, works with the cameras and recorders you already have, including Hikvision, Dahua, CP Plus, TVT, Uniview, Axis, Hanwha and any camera or recorder that supports RTSP or ONVIF, and installs in about 60 seconds. Smoke and fire, and people after hours in the zones you mark, are standard on every site too. A second, larger model checks every event before you are alerted, and the alert is a photo on WhatsApp, Telegram or the Foreman app while it is still happening. Your recordings stay on site, and we never train on your footage.