Find your disk drive using fdisk or some other utility.  More info here.

fdisk -l

Example:

steve@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 32 GiB, 34359738368 bytes, 67108864 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xe96d30af

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *        2048 58720255 58718208  28G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       58722302 67106815  8384514   4G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       58722304 67106815  8384512   4G 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Disk /dev/sdb: 557 GiB, 598074195968 bytes, 1168113664 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
steve@ubuntu:~$

The drive is the 500GiB drive /dev/sdb

Create a partition on the drive.  Warning!  Be careful when formatting drives and make sure you don’t format the wrong one!

echo ';' | sfdisk /dev/sdb

You should now see the partition when you run fdisk -l again.  If you run into issues mounting the drive, try formating the drive with a different utility i.e.(fdisk, cfdisk, gparted etc.)

steve@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 557 GiB, 598074195968 bytes, 1168113664 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x717f99ba

Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1        2048 1168113663 1168111616  557G 83 Linux   <--New Partition
steve@ubuntu:~$

Create mount point

mkdir -p /video/mount/point

Now mount the partition

mount /dev/sdb1 /video/mount/point

Allow unifi-video user to own the mount point

chown -R video/mount/point

Add the drive to /etc/fstab to auto mount on system bootup.  More info here.

Change /dev/sdXx to your drive and /MOUNTLOCATION to your mount location.

sudo echo "/dev/sdXx /MOUNTLOCATION ext4 rw,defaults 0 0 " >> /etc/fstab

Example:

sudo echo "/dev/sdb1 /video/mount/point ext4 rw,defaults 0 0 " >> /etc/fstab

If you have issues running the above command, you can manually add it to the file with

sudo vi /etc/fstab

add the following line to the bottom of the file.  Change sdXx to your drive and /MOUNTLOCATION to the mount location of the drive.

/dev/sdXx /MOUNTLOCATION ext4 rw,defaults 0 0

You can reboot the system to make sure that the drive mounts properly.

Now you can log into the UniFi Video controller and set the Recording Path by going to Settings>SYSTEM CONFIGURATION>CONFIGURE and set the Recording Path to /video/mount/point

Tip. In the SYSTEM CONFIGURATION menu you can hover over the Disk and it’ll show you your total amount of recording space.