Ask your camera administrator to retrieve an older recording, not just show the retention setting. The useful measure is how far back the system has footage you can actually use. A live view, a storage estimate, and a saved clip answer different questions.
Start with when an incident would be noticed
Think about the events your business needs to review and how quickly someone usually learns about them. A delivery discrepancy may surface during a later stock check. Damage at a rarely used entrance may go unnoticed for several days. Use those business needs to propose a review window for each area.
Have the person responsible for your business's privacy, contractual, and legal requirements approve the retention policy. A camera vendor's suggested setting is not evidence that a particular duration meets your obligations. There is no need to give every camera the same operational priority.
A selected duration may exceed the available storage
Storage settings and recording demands have to agree. Axis explicitly warns that full network storage or an SD card can cause old recordings to be removed before the selected retention period has passed. Treat a configured number of days as a setting to verify, not proof that every day is present.
Ask the administrator for the oldest playable recording on each important camera and whether the timeline has gaps. Compare that result with the desired review window. After cameras are added or recording settings change, check again once enough recording history exists to assess the result.
If capacity falls short, request options with their tradeoffs. More storage, different recording schedules, and different video settings can change the outcome. Approve the choice based on the footage you need to retrieve rather than choosing the largest advertised number of days.
What was recorded, and at what quality?
Continuous recording and event-triggered recording produce different histories. UniFi Protect, for example, offers continuous, detection-only, and disabled recording modes, plus schedules and pre-event and post-event buffers. Detection-only recording depends on an event being triggered; periods outside the recording schedule won't provide the same coverage as continuous recording.
Have an authorized employee carry out an ordinary, planned activity in the area and ask the administrator to retrieve it. Check whether the recording includes enough of the approach and departure to understand what happened. Avoid using customer interactions or sensitive activity as test material.
Check older footage at the level of detail you actually need. Some systems change quality over time: UniFi Protect's Enhanced Retention can reduce older recordings to lower quality, and that lost quality cannot be restored. The existence of an old clip doesn't establish that a small detail will still be readable.
Source: Ubiquiti: UniFi Protect Recording Modes & Schedules.
Source: Ubiquiti: Managing Storage and Retention in UniFi Protect.
Practice saving a clip before one is urgent
Choose a harmless test segment, export it through the approved process, and open the saved file. Confirm the camera label, visible time, time zone, and playback are understandable. Decide who can retrieve footage when the usual administrator is away.
For a reported incident, ask the authorized administrator to preserve the relevant footage promptly under the business's incident procedure. Give them the location and time range, including useful context before and after the event. Record where the preserved file is stored and who can access it. Keep footage in approved storage and use an authorized sharing method when a specific recipient needs it.