2 purple drives and an SSD or just 2 purple

[sjamieso]

Hi there, I have been reading the cliff notes on the setup a few times and it indicated putting the OS and clips on a small SSD and a purple hdd for the remaining DB is the way to go.

Currently I have a Dell Optiplex 7020 with the factory 500g hdd, 8 dahua starlights (and planning 2 or 3 more) and a 4 tb purple setup with the windows 10 and and DB files on the C: drive and the stored/alerts on the 4GB purple E:

I splurged and purchased a 2nd 4tb purple for extra storage and wondered the best way to set it up.

Now i'm a bit conflicted because i will be splitting the space between 2 purple drives and starting to think it was a mistake, I was going to put the 2nd purple drive as my main drive but maybe I should have another small SSD, and somehow use the 2 purples as one drive.

I'm sure its been done before but I haven't found anything that sounds like what I'm doing, anyone have any suggestions on setup before I screw up my wonderfully working setup?

Thanks!

 

[SouthernYankee]

You have it a little off.

Use about a 120 GB SSD for windows OS and BlueIris, application, Alerts and database. Use the WD purple drive for the clips.

If you have two drives, put 1/2 the cameras on one drive and the other half on the other drive.

 

[sjamieso]

You have it a little off.

Use about a 120 GB SSD for windows OS and BlueIris, application, Alerts and database. Use the WD purple drive for the clips.

If you have two drives, put 1/2 the cameras on one drive and the other half on the other drive.

Ah I did not think of splitting the drives like that, I guess I have to re watch the clips and archiving video part 2 again!

Question, Why is the database file on the small drive anyway, it seems counter intuitive to me like it would need a larger space, just wondering because I don’t understand how it works I guess.

How large of a partition should I allot to it once I get my ssd all installed and ready to go?

 

[SouthernYankee]

It is on the fast drive. The DB does not get that big.

In widows only one partition for the os and application. The c drive.

 

[bp2008]

Don't bother buying an SSD if you don't have one for it already. Unless you end up with a ridiculous number of clips it won't make much difference anyway.

 

[Mr_D]

I have a 120 GB SSD for Windows+BI and a 4 TB purple for clips. My clips.dat file is only 61 MB after about 6 months of operation. The whole C drive is using just under 30 GB. I have 7 cameras running now with two more planned. The only thing I wished I'd done differently is the size of the purple drive. I should have sucked it up and gotten 8 TB. I think I'll eventually add a folder on my Synology as an aux folder to increase retention time a bit.

 

[sjamieso]

I use a 500gb WD blue ssd and two 4tb WD purple.

Do you mind showing a screen shot of your setup? I'm in the process of trying to migrate over the DB etc and still trying not to delete important stuff

My limit size was 300 GB and I'm trying to shrink it and delete the old folder so it will fit on my smaller SSD then clone the HDD

I have a Thermaltake Duet, but I'm a noob on HDD cloning so its also a learning curve hahaha! anyone have any tips there? lol

I'm thinking I should have just purchased the larger SSD and trade the 4 GB in for a single 8GB and use the existing 4GB as spare.. but that requires a trip to the store again

 

[sjamieso]

I have a 120 GB SSD for Windows+BI and a 4 TB purple for clips. My clips.dat file is only 61 MB after about 6 months of operation. The whole C drive is using just under 30 GB. I have 7 cameras running now with two more planned. The only thing I wished I'd done differently is the size of the purple drive. I should have sucked it up and gotten 8 TB. I think I'll eventually add a folder on my Synology as an aux folder to increase retention time a bit.

Well mine is still in the bag, so I'm thinking the same thing but I am watching the part 2 clips video for the third time to understand the splitting drive setup, I keep getting distracted and missing key points in the drive sharing...

 

[sjamieso]

Don't bother buying an SSD if you don't have one for it already. Unless you end up with a ridiculous number of clips it won't make much difference anyway.

Wel it seems slightly more complex and I won't argue with you, my only issue is I do alot of remote viewing from the app, and I do notice quite a delay quite often, and from what I gather, that is one thing the SSD is said to help address a bit.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Sjamieso

Start over do a clean install of windows on the SSD. Then install bi. Put the bi new folder on the hard drive everything else on the SSD. This is my setup.with windows 7 it is only 60 gb after running for a year.

The remote viewing being slow has more to do with the network or a poorly configured system with high cpu

 

[DLONG2]

Sjamieso

Start over do a clean install of windows on the SSD. Then install bi. Put the bi new folder on the hard drive everything else on the SSD. This is my setup.with windows 7 it is only 60 gb after running for a year.

The remote viewing being slow has more to do with the network or a poorly configured system with high cpu

Richard's video tutorial on 'Clips and Archiving' (Blue Iris Video Tutorials) shows a different arrangement. He says the NEW folder should always be on the fastest drive, which would be an SSD. He also says that the DB path should likewise always be on the same drive as the NEW folder.

 

[SouthernYankee]

That will shorten the life of the SSD. With the increase number of writes. With any number of cameras youu will be moving the data from the SSD to the save folder location. My new folder is on the 4tb wd purple drive. IIdo not use the save folder, there is no perforemance hit. The SSD should be for a heavy read load. Not write.

The only time I would agree with thessd for the new folder is if there are multiple readers looking at the data for the last few hours, continuously.

 

[DLONG2]

Thanks, SouYan. Then what advantage is there for the SSD drive in a Blue Iris PC besides a quicker boot? You have the database, alerts and storage on your SSD?

 

[looney2ns]

A small ssd, say 120gb is all that is needed.
Put only the OS, BI and the Database file on the SSD.
Everything else goes to the purple drive.
The database rebuilds every night, while it is rebuilding nothing is recorded.
Depending on the number of cameras this can take many minutes to complete.
Putting the DB on the SSD speeds this up significantly.
Put all recordings in the NEW folder, there is very little reason to be moving files from New to Stored.