Blue Iris server build question

Looking Out

Pulling my weight
Feb 27, 2022
67
145
New Jersey
I am building a Blue Iris server for a system with ~6 POE cameras and have some questions.

General Configuration Goals:
i7 7700 (Used Optiplex)
128 GB SSD for Windows and Blue Iris
6 TB HDD such as WD Purple

Any benefit to writing to an M.2 NVMe SSD like the link below and then transferring the files to the 6 GB HDD when full? It looks like Blue Iris has this capability. Will this allow Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe Interface PCIe 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive with V-NAND 3 bit MLC Technology - Micro Center
 
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I started out doing something similar with my BI pc. It will work, but ended up making a single folder on a particular harddrive, set the size limit before deletions take place. If you, perhaps, need to create separate folders on the harddrive, do the same... ie; jpeg folder/video folder/alert folder. All the transferring just creating unnecessary moving around of files. JMHO.
 
My Standard allocation post.

1) Do not use time (limit clip age)to determine when BI video files are moved or deleted, only use space. Using time wastes disk space.
2) If New and stored are on the same disk drive do not used stored, set the stored size to zero, set the new folder to delete, not move. All it does is waste CPU time and increase the number of disk writes. You can leave the stored folder on the drive just do not use it.
3) Never allocate over 90% of the total disk drive to BI.
4) if using continuous recording on the BI camera settings, record tab, set the combine and cut video to 1 hour or 3 GB. Really big files are difficult to transfer.
5) it is recommend to NOT store video on an SSD (the C: drive).
6) Do not run the disk defragmenter on the video storage disk drives.
7) Do not run virus scanners on BI folders
8) an alternate way to allocate space on multiple drives is to assign different cameras to different drives, so there is no file movement between new and stored.
9) Never use an External USB drive for the NEW folder. Never use a network drive for the NEW folder.
10) for performance do not put more than about 10,000 files in a folder, the search and adding files will eat CPU and disk performance. Look at using a sub folder per camera (see &CAM in bi help)


Advanced storage:
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continuous recording, I recommend formatting the disk, with a windows cluster size of 1024K (1 Megabyte). This is a increase from the 4K default. This will reduce the physical number of disk write, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
Hint:
On the Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage tab, if there is any red on the bars you have a allocation problem. If there is no Green, you have no free space, this is bad.
 
You may have speed benefits from using a M.2 NVMe SSD drive for the OS, but I absolutely would NOT use it for recording your CCTV footage. I fact I would say you should never record any of that to your OS drive. Put all the recordings on their own drive so when it fails, it doesn't take out your OS too. 6 cameras is not a lot and your system will be able to direct record everything to a standard hardrive without breaking a sweat.
 
@The Automation Guy Just to clarify the original question. I was inquiring about using a SSD C: drive for the OS and Blue Iris Program. Saving New to the m.2 NVMe SSD and then saving Stored on the large HDD.
 
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NO, BI and Windows is on the SSD. Everything else is HDD.

New goes straight to HDD and do not use the Stored folder. Especially if you only have one drive - needless CPU usage and moving stuff around.

Only use the stored folder if you have a NAS. Otherwise if the HDDs are in the unit, so say you have two HDDs, then you split the cameras on the two drives all as "new".
 
Excellent. Thank you all for the input!