Storage, retention and housekeeping

What fills the SD card (history, journals, media, camera frames, build caches), the retention knobs for each, and a monthly checklist.

● verified for 9.0.0 · firmware train 8.2.0.0

● last verified 2026-09-17 · mirrored 2026-09-15

What grows

Data	Grows by	Knob
Fleet history	About one row per numeric metric per device per poll	History retention (default 45 days; 0 disables pruning) under Settings › System › Logs, verbosity & power
Journals	Per entry plus its snapshot	Per-journal retention days (0 = keep) and the preview-then-confirm prune
Journal media	Photos, downscaled	Pruned with their journal; counted in the storage card
Camera frames	One per interval per camera	Per-camera retention days and GB cap
ESPHome build caches	Per toolchain version	The update refuses under 1.5 GiB free; clear old caches over SSH if needed
Product libraries	Two files per library: the installed version and the one it replaced	None needed; each install replaces the older kept copy (Settings › Integrations › Libraries)
Run evidence roll-up	A handful of numbers per zone and per probe for each finished day, kept after history retention prunes the raw rows so a run report can judge a long run	None; kept by design (a few rows a day)
Brain logs	By verbosity	Drop the log level back to INFO after troubleshooting

Settings › System › Journals & storage: read the sizes; prune what you will not miss; export what you will.
Settings › Devices › Firmware: check disk free on the toolchain card.
Download a backup.
Settings › System › Time: confirm the hub clock is synced and drift is small.
Kit › Inventory: every in-service device online; take anything unplugged out of service.

Retiring or harvesting a plant writes an archive bundle first; those bundles are the long-term record and are not subject to journal retention.

DSC-Brain user guide · Storage, retention and housekeeping · this page is edited on the site; the Notion original was retired after the mirror