BI not recording more than a few days on an 8TB drive...Help Please!

[Roman]

Hey all, as the title says my BI machine for about the last month or so is having some issues. I am not getting recording for more than a few days to a week on an 8TB drive. I've attempted to read a decent amount of threads in order to fix but something is not working. Not sure if its due to an update or something that maybe I did a month or a few ago but I never had this issue in the past. I am still using BI 4 btw....

Some of the things I have attempted to do from reading various threads:
I am currently rebuilding DB now (still ongoing)
Not using time (limit clip age) only space
My new and stored are on separate drives because BI the application is loaded on my C: drive and my storage goes to my 8TB drives which is D: but I still put zero for stored which goes to my C: drive under the BI application
I am using continuous recording on about 11 cams and went through each cam and changed the combine and cut video to 1 hour or 3GB since big files are difficult to transfer (from what I read)

I used to get prior to this issue, about 30 days or so of recordings for each camera since I am using an 8TB drive so something wonky is going on.

 

[wittaj]

Sounds like maybe somewhere in your settings you have enabled to flag alerts and those do not delete based on clips and archiving and now the drive is full. Or the drive is being used for other things.

 

[bp2008]

The DB rebuild should work around the problem. The clip database gets corrupted too easily in my opinion. Remember to use the "Repair/Regenerate" option in the database submenu (or Delete & Regenerate if you don't mind losing all your past alerts). The "run maintenance" and "compact/repair" are mostly worthless options in my experience and they fix nothing.

On your recording disk, you need to make sure you have enough unallocated free space to give Blue Iris some time to delete older clips, since that happens only periodically. Typically 50-150 GB of free space on a large disk like that would be enough but if you make particularly large clip files you may need more than that.

It can take a bit of trial and error to dial in the right amount of space allocation because the units shown for disk capacity on computers can be misleading. For example I have a "3TB" hard drive and windows shows it as 2.72 TB capacity. But in Blue Iris I allocated 2730 GB for clip storage on that disk, and there is still typically 50-60 GB of unallocated free space.

 

[sebastiantombs]

You've also overallocated the R drive. Blue Iris needs a little "wiggle room" as files are written/deleted. Cut the allocation back too 6950 rather than the full 7000MB.

 

[Roman]

Sounds like maybe somewhere in your settings you have enabled to flag alerts and those do not delete based on clips and archiving and now the drive is full. Or the drive is being used for other things.

I am not sure where I would look to see if I have enabled flag alerts? Also, this pc / drive is strictly used for BI...nothing else goes on this machine.

 

[Roman]

You've also overallocated the R drive. Blue Iris needs a little "wiggle room" as files are written/deleted. Cut the allocation back too 6950 rather than the full 7000MB.

Thanks for the assistance...I cut it back to 6900 just to be safe

 

[sebastiantombs]

What's the full formatted space available? Allocate 90% to Blue Iris.

I'd also not keep alerts on the C drive.

 

[Roman]

The DB rebuild should work around the problem. The clip database gets corrupted too easily in my opinion. Remember to use the "Repair/Regenerate" option in the database submenu (or Delete & Regenerate if you don't mind losing all your past alerts). The "run maintenance" and "compact/repair" are mostly worthless options in my experience and they fix nothing.

I selected "Repair DB" under "Clip Storage"....not sure if that is the correct option I should be using? My apologies but in regards to your statement I am not sure where any other database submenu is located in order to find "Repair/Regenerate" or "Delete/Regenerate". I don't mind using the Delete / Regenerate option btw as I have nothing I need to save on any saved clips.

 

[Roman]

What's the full formatted space available? Allocate 90% to Blue Iris.

I'd also not keep alerts on the C drive.

Out of an 8TB drive it shows 7.27 available for use. How would I change alerts to the D: drive where the "Recordings" are saved? Just move the alerts folder from the c: drive over to the d: drive or just make a folder on the d: drive and call it Alerts and point BI to that?

 

[sebastiantombs]

Blue Iris likes to see the same directory structure it creates when installed. This is true even on systems with multiple drives used for video storage. You can simply duplicate that structure and allocate space there as needed, but you do need to remember how much space is there versus the TOTAL being allocated for all directories. If needed you can also rename the AUX directories to whatever you find convenient by right clicking on them in the allocation window of the BI control panel.

 

[Roman]

Blue Iris likes to see the same directory structure it creates when installed. This is true even on systems with multiple drives used for video storage. You can simply duplicate that structure and allocate space there as needed, but you do need to remember how much space is there versus the TOTAL being allocated for all directories. If needed you can also rename the AUX directories to whatever you find convenient by right clicking on them in the allocation window of the BI control panel.

Can I just create a new folder named "Alerts" (which is what it is called under the C: drive) and add it under the D: drive where my recordings and database are being stored and then just point the directory under the BI console for Alerts to that new folder location? Will that work or am I missing something...my apologies for not following completely....I am a novice at BI and hardly ever go into the machine to manage anything...this literally is the first time I have had issues with it since it was built several years ago.

 

[sebastiantombs]

This is how I handle it for simplicity and consistency -

 

[bp2008]

I selected "Repair DB" under "Clip Storage"....not sure if that is the correct option I should be using? My apologies but in regards to your statement I am not sure where any other database submenu is located in order to find "Repair/Regenerate" or "Delete/Regenerate". I don't mind using the Delete / Regenerate option btw as I have nothing I need to save on any saved clips.

Right click in the clip list and that is where you find the Database submenu.

 

[Roman]

Right click in the clip list and that is where you find the Database submenu.

My clips section to the right is showing "empty list" so whatever i did before appears to have cleared out everything. I will just let it ride for now and see if there are any improvements instead of redoing the db maintenance.

 

[bp2008]

Better check the status window > Clip storage tab. If there's still a big red bar like before then things are still out-of-whack. This sort of graph is what you want to see.

 

[Roman]

Better check the status window > Clip storage tab. If there's still a big red bar like before then things are still out-of-whack. This sort of graph is what you want to see.

I just checked and after the db repair or whatever the attached pic is the newest of my clip storage....i believe things are better?

 

[bp2008]

Yeah that looks fantastic. You could actually allocate more of the space until the +550G shrinks to something smaller (150-50G perhaps, like I use for free space).

 

[Roman]

Just wanted to give a "special" thanks to both @sebastiantombs and @bp2008 for all the assistance they provided during my latest BI recording issues. This is a great community and to have a response within 1/2 hr of posting is really something special!

Also, @bp2008 , I took your advice and moved my free space gauge up just a little from 6900GB to 7200GB which leaves me with roughly 150GB instead of the 550GB or so that I attached a few posts up

Thanks again everyone!