Drive upgrade procedure

[sebastiantombs]

I've been using BI for four or five years now, since the 3.x days. While I'm fairly familiar with it I am never going to claim to be an expert. I'm going to be adding a second WD purple for video storage since the cameras have outgrown the current drive capacity. I plan on splitting the cameras across the two drives and will probably do a reformat of the original drive and start with a fresh data base. Exactly how to do that is what I'm not confident with.

I will stop BI from running as a service and won't restart it. Then I'll delete the database files leaving the directory in place. Once the new drive is installed, I'll start BI running again, set it as a service again and let the database build itself. I also have a small drive I keep alerts on. I want to keep those alerts since they date back about two months and I've already caught some critical video on them.

What I am wondering about is am I on the right path with deleting the database and starting fresh? I'm also wondering if I do a "repair/rebuild", with pointers to that small alert drive, will they get indexed into the data base? I can easily read those files but it's a heck of a lot easier if they're in the database and can be reviewed quickly using UI3.

 

[Flintstone61]

are the alerts .jpg's or video? or both? how big a file is the DB? maybe you can copy it and save some of it? When you split up the cams maybe try to keep the "critical video" camera #'s in the same named folder as before and keep the db folder? then you might be able to do a rapir/rebuild afterwards and find them....
Orrrr put the critical video in a seperate folder on a usb drive for a minute. then format both drives. or wait one,,, i hear a guru coming thru the Ipcamtalk wire....

 

[Flintstone61]

if it was me,,,,,I'd save the data i dont want to lose on a USB drive, and then I'd be free to experiment.

 

[sebastiantombs]

The alerts are on a separate drive as .bvr files so no chance of losing them unless I get really fumble fingered. I do plan on copying the database files out to a temporary location. The machine has plenty of drive space for that and the database isn't all that big, about 2.5GB. All the cameras are named by location so keeping track of their files is fairly simple as well.

 

[Flintstone61]

Someday When I'm a big boy I'm gonna get a 2nd WD Purple drive and giggle while it's writing to 2 drives....The 8TB wd purple is really nice.
but right now I'm mulling over what kind of outdoor Ceramic creature is going to house/hide my LPR cam out on the terraced Block landscape wall. maybe an oversized frog? a sleeping crackhead? with all the Canadian geese on site maybe I could go that route. I hope your drive addition goes well. be interesting to see what you found out.

 

[samplenhold]

When I started with BI I had on WD 10TB purple, called 'New'. That was with just two cams. I added ten more cams and then a second 10TB purple drive called 'New2'. At that time I just kept the files on New as they were and divided up the twelve cams between the two drives. So for a while, New had files from cams that anything written once the second drive was installed were now on New2. So six cams had files on both drives. No issues.

Then I bought more cams. So I bought a third 10TB purple drive, New3. Again, I did not move files, just re-parceled where the latest files would be written. Currently have 23 cams writing to those disks, basically eight/eight/seven.

As the older files were deleted off those drives, ultimately the drives only had files that are the current allocation. The database took care of it's self.

 

[Flintstone61]

Oh yeah, I think thats how my migration to 2 drives went (sort of ).
But then I got tricky and threw a whole diff PC at it. I named the new drive letters G:\ & Z:\ the same as the old drive letters, and the New and other folders exactly as they were on the old PC.
But I did make a change with the Alerts and DB over to the SSD (C:\) drive.
I wasnt concerned with any previous video so I had the latitude to run amuck....but like Samplenhold said the files get overwritten eventually, and now everything is sympatico.
I do have repair/rebuild DB set at 9:30 Am 3 x wk.

 

[Flintstone61]

Maybe you could point BI to your DB folder on c drive?

 

[looney2ns]

My 1.5 cents.
Stop BI, shut down pc, install new drive. Power up PC, Initialize new HD, Format new HD using 1024k size.

Start BI, and Change the Drive folder settings in BI for what you want on the new drive.
Then designate which cameras record to which drive.
Done.

 

[sebastiantombs]

@looney2ns Basically, that's what I anticipate doing except I want to reformat the existing drive at the same time to 1024 block size. I'm considering moving the existing files on that drive onto the new one, doing the reformat on the old drive, then moving the appropriate files back onto it while leaving some for cameras that will be recording to the new drive on that drive. It would take a little time to do that given the sheer size of the data involved. Still pondering that one.

 

[TonyR]

...... right now I'm mulling over what kind of outdoor Ceramic creature is going to house/hide my LPR cam out on the terraced Block landscape wall.

Sorry about deviating from the thread's intent, but.....
This plastic rock from Home Depot is hollow and is 24 in. L x 12 in. W x 13 in. H....plenty of room for a LPR.

 

[Flintstone61]

Thread ripper!

 

[Flintstone61]

hows the drive update going sebastian?

 

[sebastiantombs]

I'll be working on it today. It's supposed to rain all day so I'll have time to tinker.

 

[IAmATeaf]

I’ve just ordered a 6tb drive to replace one of 2 2tb drives, should be here this week so I’ll be doing something similar next weekend.

In the past all I’ve ever done is stop the BI service, then copy over the content of the drive to be replaced into the new drive, then replace the drive ensuring the drive letter is the same and then restart the BI service.

When I’ve moved cams videos around, I’ve stopped all recordings then stopped the BI service. Move the existing clips around, restart the BI service, reconfigure the cams and then rebuild the DB. You lose existing alerts but all the previous clips are there.

 

[moparcruiser]

As an aside....how long do you folks save your bvr files?

I did a test run of my three cameras on a 600 gb drive partition of my c drive...and I got about 6 days.

I just upgraded to a 4 tb skyhawk drive.....if I am doing my math right that is in the ballpark of 45+ days.....plenty for my simple home system. I may add two more cams, but even then I have 3 weeks or so....

I see this talk of 10tb drives etc and feel like a sissy for only buying a 4tb drive...lol

 

[sebastiantombs]

@moparcruiser I had a single 4TB drive for 17 cameras, say 170MP/ps, and only got about a weeks worth of archive. That's with continuous recording.

I did the deed this afternoon. In the end I deleted all the files other than the alerts on the secondary drive. Recording is now spit between a 4TB and 8TB with both of them being WD purples. It sure is strange to look at disk utilization in the control panel and see all that "white" space on those drives. I guess I got the cameras pretty well split between them because watching the amount being written it's almost exactly double on the 8TB versus the 4TB.

 

[wittaj]

Many people here are of the mindset if it happened more than X weeks ago (where X could be a week or 3 weeks), then it probably doesn't matter.

If you have your alerts and notifications set properly and you have full coverage around your house, you will know fairly quickly if you need to look at something. If a neighbor comes and asks you if you caught anything about 3 weeks ago...well unless you are zoomed into their driveway or house, best case is maybe you can say oh I saw a flashlight at 3am on such date, but other than that it would be useless anyway...and unless they can give you an exact date and time, are you really going to scrub thru days of your videos for something that your cameras probably couldn't identify anyway? And if you help all your neighbors, no reason for them to get cameras LOL...

 

[sebastiantombs]

We just had an incident where my neighbors 30 ton log splitter was stolen. I had an alert from a camera that monitors street traffic, not an LPR though. I have alerts going back about a month and the theft occurred about two weeks earlier than the continuous recording were on disk for. If I had the continuous recordings we could have gotten the color of the vehicle rather than just a description, rather vague description, that the alert provided.

That showed me that something can, indeed, happen that gets missed, initially, and having a longer storage capability will fix that. No, it's not for my neighbor, it's for me and my peace of mind.

 

[wittaj]

We just had an incident where my neighbors 30 ton log splitter was stolen. I had an alert from a camera that monitors street traffic, not an LPR though. I have alerts going back about a month and the theft occurred about two weeks earlier than the continuous recording were on disk for. If I had the continuous recordings we could have gotten the color of the vehicle rather than just a description, rather vague description, that the alert provided.

That showed me that something can, indeed, happen that gets missed, initially, and having a longer storage capability will fix that. No, it's not for my neighbor, it's for me and my peace of mind.

True - if we are focused on getting clean images for our neighbors, what incentive is there for them to invest in cameras!

I do have motion trigger pictures taken that I keep longer as those don't take up much space. Obviously the camera would have had to trigger for that to happen. I keep the LPR snapshots the longest, but with all the tools people have created here, I literally can in a few minutes every morning pull up the list of vehicles that passed and know if they are new plates or not and if I need to look more at video. But I will know immediately if someone got within specified areas around my house which is the primary concern.