Disk usage 98-99%, poor framerate in web server.

Xizenta

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Hello,

I have a PC running 8 cameras with at least one solid state disk and one WD purple drive. It was working fine for a long time for my purposes and the CPU usage hovers around 50% normally.

I have my clip and archiving rules set to put all the alerts and new clips on the solid state drive and then move them to the "stored" folder on the purple drive when X days pass or when the new/alerts folders reach capacity. The "stored" folder on the purple drive is set to limit capacity to 2000gb and it's a 3 terabyte drive.

What has happened for the past five days is the stored folder has reached the 2000gb capacity and the system performance has plummeted for the purposes of monitoring the cameras from my web view. I do not understand why this would happen. There is plenty of space on the hard drive (about 1TB). I thought that the system should be able to easily delete the oldest clips in the "stored" folder when the folder reached the 2000gb limit, and be ready and able to accept new incoming files.

It seems to have a problem with this plan, as the web view shows "Disk: 98%" or "Disk: 99%" and only allows me to see 1 frame per second. It's not my web view settings either, I used to monitor at 15 fps at these settings.
 

SouthernYankee

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lets start slow and simple.

Please provide a screen shots. full frame (use windows 10 snip & sketch tool)
1) windows task manager process tab sorted by memory (most at the top),
2) windows task manager preformance, GPU
3) Blue Iris Setting about tab
4) Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage
5) blue Iris status cameras
6) Blue iris settings clips and archiving tab , for the NEW folder, stored folder, alerts folder. (three screen shots)
 

Xizenta

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SouthernYankee

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You have over allocated the space on the C drive see the red in the clip storage screen shot.

your disk configuration need work.

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 4 GB.
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.

Advanced storage:
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continous 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.
 

Xizenta

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You have over allocated the space on the C drive see the red in the clip storage screen shot.
I understand and after doing some research I am no longer going to write to my SSD and later move to purple, I'll just write everything to purple.

However, how did I cause the overallocation? I have plenty of space on the C drive. I set a reasonable limit for file size on both new and alerts. What could I have done differently?
 

SouthernYankee

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How many big the files you are writing to the small drive space. The C: drive use system files that do not show up, on the crash dump file, the pagefile, the files used for backups... You have 8 cameras and if you have the file size for each camera set to 8 GB, then that is 64 GB and you allocated one 50 GB. Do not put video on the C drive the dive is small.

Screen shot ,
on two of the camera properties the record tab.
 

Xizenta

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How many big the files you are writing to the small drive space. The C: drive use system files that do not show up, on the crash dump file, the pagefile, the files used for backups... You have 8 cameras and if you have the file size for each camera set to 8 GB, then that is 64 GB and you allocated one 50 GB. Do not put video on the C drive the dive is small.

Screen shot ,
on two of the camera properties the record tab.
Ok. maybe that is a reason why. I do have my videos set to 4 or 6 hour increments cause i like scrubbing the videos that way to review footage.

However, for anyone else with this problem, I realized that the problem began right after I deleted a clip from my New folder. That may have been a contributing factor. I'm not sure how deleting a clip would cause an overallocation but it apparently did.
 

windguy

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@Xizenta - I'm in the process of setting up a new BI5 setup for the first time and trying to figure out the CLIP & ARCHIVING settings. I set mine up like you had after watching some setup videos, but I guess that's not quite right according to SouthernYankee. I'm still a little fuzzy on the recommendations. Could you please provide updated screen grabs for your NEW, STORED and ALERTS setup. Just want to make sure I'm interpreting what SouthernYankee is suggesting and get your confirmation. Much appreciated, thanks!
 

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2) If New and stored are on the same disk drive do not use 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.
Thanks for the setup tips. I've reread your post a few times and I kept getting caught up on TIP#2. In setting this up from the first time and watching setup videos, I thought the purpose of NEW was to store video for a set amount of disk space or time interval and then move that video to STORED for archive purposes. I had setup NEW on the C: (SSD) and the STORED on the D: (Purple). I'm starting to understand what you are saying to just collect video into the NEW folder on the D (purple) drive and not to do any file transfers to STORED. Sounds simple enough to setup that way. Thanks!
 

SouthernYankee

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The recommendation to not use stored folder if they are on the same drive as the new folder.
I recommend to NOT use the SSD on the C drive to store video. Put the new folder on the D drive. Allocate the D drive for the NEW folder.
Please remove the D drive or blue iris folders for the virus protection scans.
Make sure to turn off the disk defragmentation on the D drive.
 

windguy

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Thanks SouthernYankee. Will follow your guidance.
How about the ALERTS folder? They are stored video clips so I take it you'd want that on the D drive as well?
 
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windguy

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I followed all the suggestions from Sensei SouthernYankee and BI is recording continuously now and working very well. Many thanks for the help.

I'm still fuzzy on the use of the ALERTS folder. I read through the BI Help Manual, which is pretty awesome BTW, but don't really see where to enable ALERTS.
For now, I backed out the disk allocation to 10GB to free up some space. If I need more later I'll bump it up.

CLIP FOLDER help .png

Also noticed that each AUX folder has a default value of 10GB so I zeroed them out to free up disk space as well. Not sure if that makes a difference.
Screen shots below of NEW, STORED and ALERTS folders and Clip Storage Allocation. Hopefully I've set it up right.

BI New Folder Settings.pngBI Stored Folder Settings.pngBI Alerts Folder Settings.pngBI Clip Storage Settings.png

Also provided below are the steps for removing virus scans and turning off disk defrag since I wasn't aware of how to do so. Hope that helps someone else.

REMOVE DRIVE FROM VIRUS PROTECT SCANS


START MENU > SETTINGS > UPDATE & SECURITY > WINDOWS SECURITY > VIRUS & THREAT PROTECTION
UNDER VIRUS & THREAD PROTECTION SETTINGS - SELECT MANAGE SETTINGS
UNDER EXCLUSIONS - SELECT ADD OR REMOVE EXCLUSIONS
SELECT ADD AN EXCLUSION > FOLDER > SELECT D DRIVE
D:\ FOLDER SHOULD BE DISPLAYED

TURN OFF DISK DEFRAGMENTATION

Windows 10 disable automatic defragmentation

START MENU > SETTINGS > search for "DEFRAGMENT AND OPTIMIZE YOUR DRIVES" and select
Select CHANGE SETTINGS
Under Optimization Schedule - uncheck RUN ON A SCHEDULE - C drive and D drive will be removed or select just the D drive
 
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