Now that I think about it I plan on installing about 16 -18 turret cameras on my house. From what I have read you have to disassemble the camera to installed the SD card. The cameras will be installed between 8 and 20 feet up and It will be a PITA to replace the SD cards in the cameras once they are mounted. If they work without them and the SD cards are just used for back up I probably won't installed them. I will look into using a cloud service to back up my video. I'm not their yet but I'm getting close to the age now where going on a ladder 20 ft in the air is not a good idea..