Experiences with an SSD. Recommendations?

[electro.concierge]

Currently running a pretty big system. Considering adding more cameras (6) and increasing quality (2 - 4k cameras for the exterior). Had to pull about 90 minutes of footage for an incident and it took multiple tries. Forced restarts, BI freezing during export, errors playing the rendered mp4 file. Eventually got a wmv file to export but at reduced quality and pausing recording while processing the export.

Storage usage was the issue, so thinking of adding a pair of 1tb ssd drives as buffers to the 6tb drives. Anyone have experience with a similar setup. Wondering which cameras benefit the most.

Currently the system runs really well, 15-20% CPU usage. Optimized as much as possible and BI5 really helped. Was 30-40% on BI4.

Quick system run down.

51 camera system -
(47 1080p)(4 1440p)
10 Constant Record, rest on motion
Direct to Drive, Intel h/w on
i7 7700
16gb ram
1060 6gb for 3x monitors
240gb ssd for operating system
2x6tb wd purple for recording storage

 

[biggen]

When you say ”storage usage” you mean bottlenecked? What is your I/O in bitrate being written to the drives at any given time? It’s a lot of cams but you have the vast majority set for motion. Are they ever all writing at once? Those two purple drives are they setup as a RAID 1 array or are you splitting half the cams to one drive with the other half being written to the second drive? Being only 5400 RPM drives that could also be an issue. Have you considered going with a "beefier" drive? Something like a Seagate Exos X 7200 RPM?

What was your system load when you were trying to export the clip? I'm wondering if you were just running out of CPU cycles when you were attempting to do that.

You would need an enterprise SLC SSD to hold up under heavy writing. Samsung and Intel both make excellent Enterprise drives. If you need SATA then the Samsung 883s are great.

 

[Millstone]

My 40, 50 and 64 camera systems use an SSD for the 'New' drive, which is bounced to one, two or three HDDs based on capacity requirements from there using Blue Iris' archiving settings.

Ken made an adjustment last year to the way these file copies happen; the last drive in the chain gets its delete job run first, then its files transferred first, followed by second last, up until the current drive. This ensures that drives don't run out of space as the file copy train runs every 5 or so minutes.

 

[fixxxer0]

When you say ”storage usage” you mean bottlenecked? What is your I/O in bitrate being written to the drives at any given time? It’s a lot of cams but you have the vast majority set for motion. Are they ever all writing at once? Those two purple drives are they setup as a RAID 1 array or are you splitting half the cams to one drive with the other half being written to the second drive? Being only 5400 RPM drives that could also be an issue. Have you considered going with a "beefier" drive? Something like a Seagate Exos X 7200 RPM?

What was your system load when you were trying to export the clip? I'm wondering if you were just running out of CPU cycles when you were attempting to do that.

You would need an enterprise SLC SSD to hold up under heavy writing. Samsung and Intel both make excellent Enterprise drives. If you need SATA then the Samsung 883s are great.

.
Are the Seagate Exos X14 drives actually better than the WD purples for surveillance?

i see the Seagate X14 12TB 7200rpm for $290

the WD purple 12TB is 7200rpm and $330

wondering if i have been wasting money on the WD purple

 

[biggen]

The Seagate Exos X line are their Enterprise drives. Yes, they are the better drive.

 

[fixxxer0]

The Seagate Exos X line are their Enterprise drives. Yes, they are the better drive.

Good to know, I will try one of those for my next drive. Cheaper too!

 

[isuee94]

I've seen multiple recommendations to "pause" the system when exporting video. It sounds like a CPU usage during export issue to me.