Hard Drive Priorities

[Mainsail]

Looking to replace the 2TB drive that came in my NVR. Six cameras currently, will expand to eight eventually.

My NVR says it can handle a 6TB drive. So what will happen if, say, an 8TB drive is installed? Will it ignore the extra 2TB or refuse to play nice? If the latter, can I just partition it to 6TB?

I ask the above because I don't find a surveillance drive with the specs I want or think I need that's less than 8TB.

I have some lag during playback- not at the NVR but at my laptop (the NVR is connected to the wifi router by Cat5 cable). I think there would be less lag with a faster platter speed or bigger cache, or both. Of those two, which would be more effective at reducing the lag?

Also, should I be looking at surveilance hard drives or do server hard drives do the job equally well?

 

[alastairstevenson]

I have some lag during playback- not at the NVR but at my laptop (the NVR is connected to the wifi router by Cat5 cable). I think there would be less lag with a faster platter speed or bigger cache, or both. Of those two, which would be more effective at reducing the lag?

Neither would change that.
With a sustained transfer speed of up to 245MB/s the HDD throughput far surpasses the traffic level produced by 6 cameras - which at, say 8Mbps each equates to under 50Mbps. Which is about 6MB/s.

I have some lag during playback- not at the NVR but at my laptop

That lets out the HDD in the NVR if it's OK at the NVR.
So the laptop may be the weak link.
Or the way it's communicating.
If the laptop is connected over WiFi, that's likely to be the cause of the problem.
Try connecting the laptop to a wired connection and see if that changes anything.

And then there is also the video rendering capability of the laptop.
For HD camera streams, that can be quite demanding.
Check the laptop CPU whilst viewing the video.

And also - the router ethernet ports can also be a bottleneck when handling video streams, depending on the model.
It's good practice to stream IP camera video through a switch as opposed to though the router to avoid the congestion that can result on the switch ports, and also the download performance. Routers are for routing. Switches are for switching.

What's the nature of the lag that you are seeing?

 

[Parley]

"My NVR says it can handle a 6TB drive. So what will happen if, say, an 8TB drive is installed? Will it ignore the extra 2TB or refuse to play nice? If the latter, can I just partition it to 6TB?"

Interesting question that I cannot answer. I have going through this myself as I want to increase the storage capacity of an NVR. The sales brochures say 4 HDD at a maximum of 8TB each. Then while searching I come across a data sheet that says a maximum of 4 HDD at 12TB each. All I can think of is a software change. I would hate to spend the money for the 12TB and it does not work.

 

[lewic]

"My NVR says it can handle a 6TB drive. So what will happen if, say, an 8TB drive is installed? Will it ignore the extra 2TB or refuse to play nice? If the latter, can I just partition it to 6TB?"

Interesting question that I cannot answer. I have going through this myself as I want to increase the storage capacity of an NVR. The sales brochures say 4 HDD at a maximum of 8TB each. Then while searching I come across a data sheet that says a maximum of 4 HDD at 12TB each. All I can think of is a software change. I would hate to spend the money for the 12TB and it does not work.

I know for the Hikvision units it will support over what is listed in the spec sheets. Reason is because at the time the unit came out the larger size was not readily available and so the spec sheet just shows the max that it was tested with. I have tried larger HDD's than what is listed in the specs and it works fine.

 

[Mainsail]

Neither would change that.
With a sustained transfer speed of up to 245MB/s the HDD throughput far surpasses the traffic level produced by 6 cameras - which at, say 8Mbps each equates to under 50Mbps. Which is about 6MB/s.


That lets out the HDD in the NVR if it's OK at the NVR.
So the laptop may be the weak link.
Or the way it's communicating.
If the laptop is connected over WiFi, that's likely to be the cause of the problem.
Try connecting the laptop to a wired connection and see if that changes anything.

And then there is also the video rendering capability of the laptop.
For HD camera streams, that can be quite demanding.
Check the laptop CPU whilst viewing the video.

And also - the router ethernet ports can also be a bottleneck when handling video streams, depending on the model.
It's good practice to stream IP camera video through a switch as opposed to though the router to avoid the congestion that can result on the switch ports, and also the download performance. Routers are for routing. Switches are for switching.

What's the nature of the lag that you are seeing?

Thanks for all the info.

The lag is during playback. Say a person is walking down the sidewalk past my house. During playback the person is walking, then freezes, then they're fast-walking at mach1 or are suddenly 50' from where they stopped. It does this most of the time, but not all the time, and almost always thru one of the six cameras. I've tried swapping cameras around, swapping ports, and replacing the POE cable- makes no difference- but since it works when I watch on the monitor connected directly to the NVR, I doubt it's any of those things anyway.

My assumption was that the HDD was getting overworked by the six camera inputs coming in while trying to also send me the playback. So I figured bigger cache or faster platter would help.

The six cameras are connected to the NVR in the garage. I have a monitor connected in the NVR in the garage. The NVR is connected to the wifi router by a CAT5 cable. The laptop is connected by wifi.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Would you be able to test for the problem with the laptop on a wired connection?

 

[Mainsail]

Would you be able to test for the problem with the laptop on a wired connection?

I just tried, made no difference.

Here's the important specs of the laptop:

OMEN by HP - 15t Laptop

•Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ (2.8 GHz, up to 3.8 GHz, 6 MB cache, 4 cores) + NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5 dedicated)
•15.6" diagonal 4K IPS anti-glare WLED-backlit (3840 x 2160) with NVIDIA G-SYNC™ technology
•16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
•Intel® 802.11b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® 4.2 Combo

It's considered a 'gaming' laptop, so I would expect it to be capable of handling the playback.

 

[Parley]

I know for the Hikvision units it will support over what is listed in the spec sheets. Reason is because at the time the unit came out the larger size was not readily available and so the spec sheet just shows the max that it was tested with. I have tried larger HDD's than what is listed in the specs and it works fine.

Thank you for the reply. It is indeed a Hikvision NVR that I am looking at to upgrade to a unit with a lot more storage capacity. This one. DS-7716NI-I4/16P.

Example:

• Hard Disk
• SATA 4 SATA interfaces for 4HDDs
• Capacity Up to 8TB capacity for each HDD

Data Sheet: Hard Disk
SATA 4 SATA interfaces for 4 HDDs
Capacity Up to 12 TB capacity for each HDD (total of 48 TB)

Edit: Thank You Mainsail for bringing this topic up.

 

[crw030]

@Mainsail is this still the same EZVIZ system you were asking about back in July, 2019? EZVIZ Detailed Manual?!

I didn't participate in the brief thread in Oct, 2019 (Teach me about Hard Drives) but looking back at it now, I'd be curious how the cameras are connected to the NVR, are they hard wired or using the NVR built-in wireless?

The reason I ask is because the built-in wireless says it caps at 30Mbps, and the built-in ethernet is a 10/100 but maxes at 50 Mbps. I'm just wondering if either of those could be contributing to your longstanding issues.

 

[Mainsail]

Same system.

I don't believe the cameras can be used wirelessly. They are POE only as far as I can tell, and that's how they're connected.

There's nothing wireless until the wifi router sends it to the laptop.

 

[crw030]

Ok, so maybe a different model than I was seeing on their website. So cameras are connected wired to NVR, I assume they must have dedicated ports for the POE for the cameras, and then a separate dedicated upstream port?

 

[Mainsail]

Does this help?

 

[crw030]

That makes sense, that’s what I would expect but their website shows wireless models atm.

The only other thing I could think to try would be if there wa some way to hookup the laptop directly to the NVR, but if it needs DHCP etc that might be more trouble than it is worth.

If you think about it, the problem has to be somewhere in the links.
1. NVR LAN port might be slow
2. NVR network cable to main network might have some type of performance issue/be kinked or bad connection..
3. You eliminated laptop wireless if you connected your laptop via Ethernet cable to your network.
4. Laptop itself looks fine to me. The specs are sufficient it should be able to handle a stream.
5. Every piece of network equipment and cabling in the mix is a potential point of failure.
6. Have you had the cover off, is it a Purple Surveillance drive in the system now? If they used some kind of cheap drive in there, maybe that is in fact the problem.

 

[area651]

Also, should I be looking at surveilance hard drives or do server hard drives do the job equally well?

Interesting article that just came out yesterday. I still stand by my history of using "server drives" in my NAS and them working just as well. Things change though and the "server drives" of today might be different than those of 2010. Who really knows anymore...

What Is a "Surveillance" or "NAS" Hard Drive?

Curious what "Surveillance" and "NAS" hard drives are? Do you need one? Let's find out!

www.howtogeek.com

 

[ctgoldwing]

Interesting article that just came out yesterday. I still stand by my history of using "server drives" in my NAS and them working just as well. Things change though and the "server drives" of today might be different than those of 2010. Who really knows anymore...

What Is a "Surveillance" or "NAS" Hard Drive?

Curious what "Surveillance" and "NAS" hard drives are? Do you need one? Let's find out!

www.howtogeek.com

Good informative article area651. I use 'NAS' drives exclusively in my 3 pc's and 2 NAS boxes. Knock on wood, no drive failures in many years and no issues of xfer rates.

 

[Parley]

I have noticed that some Hikvision NVR's have RAID capability. I need to understand more on how that works with an NVR. I am in the market for a new NVR with a ton more storage capacity than what I now have. These 4MB and 8MB cameras are eating up my storage

 

[catcamstar]

I have noticed that some Hikvision NVR's have RAID capability. I need to understand more on how that works with an NVR. I am in the market for a new NVR with a ton more storage capacity than what I now have. These 4MB and 8MB cameras are eating up my storage

All depends on which RAID. Remember: RAID is not "heaven" nor the "ultimate" solution. Let me explain with an example: my NVR has 2 slots but no RAID capability. I can configure which camera goes to which disk. Image I split the load "evenly" across the two disks, if one fails, I loose 50% of my footage. Is that good? It's a "choice". Imagine I would have a RAID0 across those two disks, I would potentially (in case of a RAID crash) loose everything. If you opt for RAID1, you already loose 50% of your storage capacity. Raid crashes are still possible, however loosing one physical disk will not let you loose data. RAID5 on the other hand (with minimum 3 disks) are typically performance wise better, at the cost of lots of building/reconstruction time, especially if SW raid. And you loose 33% of your capacity. In my opinion, RAID5 with hot-spare capacity are the "least headache", but that you won't find easily in an NVR (especially with SW raid). But each raid topology has its typical Read/Write characteristics, and they can "undermine" the (good?) physical disk characteristics of the individual disk itself.

To the topic starter: if you are unsure if disk speed might be an issue, I suggest you plugin a (spare?) SSD you have lying around. Plug it in, record some data on it, if it still stutters, it is for sure data visualisation or network transfer which is messed up. Faster than SSD will never occur, nor with NAS/Server/Purple disk types.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Worth googling about SMR and CMR just now, especially with respect to RAID and WD.
A bit of a scandal going on.

 

[ctgoldwing]

All depends on which RAID. Remember: RAID is not "heaven" nor the "ultimate" solution. Let me explain with an example: my NVR has 2 slots but no RAID capability. I can configure which camera goes to which disk. Image I split the load "evenly" across the two disks, if one fails, I loose 50% of my footage. Is that good? It's a "choice". Imagine I would have a RAID0 across those two disks, I would potentially (in case of a RAID crash) loose everything. If you opt for RAID1, you already loose 50% of your storage capacity. Raid crashes are still possible, however loosing one physical disk will not let you loose data. RAID5 on the other hand (with minimum 3 disks) are typically performance wise better, at the cost of lots of building/reconstruction time, especially if SW raid. And you loose 33% of your capacity. In my opinion, RAID5 with hot-spare capacity are the "least headache", but that you won't find easily in an NVR (especially with SW raid). But each raid topology has its typical Read/Write characteristics, and they can "undermine" the (good?) physical disk characteristics of the individual disk itself.

To the topic starter: if you are unsure if disk speed might be an issue, I suggest you plugin a (spare?) SSD you have lying around. Plug it in, record some data on it, if it still stutters, it is for sure data visualisation or network transfer which is messed up. Faster than SSD will never occur, nor with NAS/Server/Purple disk types.

If you are really serious about data protection then you have to be really serious about data back up. The overall 'least expensive' route may be a cloud backup solution. Remember if you aren't backing up off premises, you aren't backing up.
In my case I have TB's of photographs going back 20 years plus the assorted ephemeral one accumulates over decades. Now, add to that my video backups. I chose to go the NAS route. In addition 2 of my sons & I back up to each other's NAS' each night. Being paranoid about backups my NAS can withstand two simultaneous drive failures and I have an installed hot spare. All you need is to have a lightning hit like I did last year and you get religion real fast.

 

[area651]

If you are really serious about data protection then you have to be really serious about data back up. The overall 'least expensive' route may be a cloud backup solution. Remember if you aren't backing up off premises, you aren't backing up.
In my case I have TB's of photographs going back 20 years plus the assorted ephemeral one accumulates over decades. Now, add to that my video backups. I chose to go the NAS route. In addition 2 of my sons & I back up to each other's NAS' each night. Being paranoid about backups my NAS can withstand two simultaneous drive failures and I have an installed hot spare. All you need is to have a lightning hit like I did last year and you get religion real fast.

View attachment 60765

That's awesome that you have family to cross NAS backup with! I looked into the various cloud storage options (backblaze, AWS, etc...) and the cheapest I could find for a 8tb backup was $520 a year! For that price, I'm better off just buying another nas and convincing some friend to just let it live on their network.