Security Camera SD Cards

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Security Camera SD Cards

Using an SD card with a security camera gives you independence from network-based storage. It means that during an event of a network outage, the security camera can keep recording and saving footage on its SD card.

Alarm.com Camera Compatible SD Cards

Not all surveillance/industrial-grade SD cards are compatible with alarm.com on-board recording. The SD cards listed below are likely to give you the best results.

Alarm.com cameras use microSD cards, not full-sized SD cards.

These SD Cards are officially supported by Alarm.com:

  • Western Digital Purple microSD cards (64GB - 1TB)
  • Micron Industrial Memory cards (32GB - 256GB)
  • Samsung Pro Endurance (128GB - 256GB)
  • SanDisk High Endurance
  • SanDisk Max Endurance (32GB - 256GB)
  • Transcend 460T (64GB - 256GB)

These SD Cards are not officially supported by Alarm.com but have been reported as compatible by users:

Surety can’t guarantee SD cards in the unofficial list will work without any issues. If you’ve used a surveillance-grade SD card with Alarm.com cameras not listed above and it worked without any issues, let us know and we’ll add it to the unofficial list.

Reliability and Endurance

Surveillance SD Cards are designed for reliable performance in harsh environments, such as extreme temperatures, humidity, and vibrations, which are common in surveillance setups as well as withstand continuous read and write operations, which is crucial for 24/7 video recording. They have higher endurance ratings, measured in terabytes written (TBW), indicating how much data can be written over the card’s lifespan.

They often include superior error correction codes (ECC) and are designed to maintain data integrity over long periods. This is vital for maintaining the reliability of surveillance footage where data loss could be critical.

Cost-effective

SVRs are usually used to record 24/7 but they come at a hefty price. Going for SD cards on the other hand is a cost-effective solution.

Recording without Audio

Recording Quality 32GB 64GB 128GB 256GB 512GB
Low: 640x360 10 fps 7 days 15 days 30 days 60 days 119 days
Medium(default): 1280x720 10 fps 4 days 7 dyas 15 days 30 days 60 days
High: 1920x1080 15 fps 2 days 4 days 7 days 15 days 30 days
Max: 1920x1080 30 fps 1 day 2 days 5 days 10 days 20 days

Recording with audio

Recording Quality 32GB 64GB 128GB 256GB 512GB
Low: 640x360 10 fps 6 days 13 days 25 days 50 days 100 days
Medium(default): 1280x720 10 fps 3 days 7 days 14 days 27 days 54 days
High: 1920x1080 15 fps 2 days 4 days 7 days 14 days 28 days
Max: 1920x1080 30 fps 1 day 2 days 5 days 10 days 19 days