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External and SMR Drive for archive?

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JonSnow

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What are your guys thoughts when it comes to SMR drives? Obviously it isn't a good idea to use SMR drives as the recording disks but what about just to archive the footage once main recording disk gets full? Is it going to be an issue since technically it will only write when Blue Iris moves the data around.

Secondly what about using external drives over USB 3.0? Regardless of SMR/CMR, again this would be to for archive footage and not to record the cameras.
 
wittaj

wittaj

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If you have the drives floating around, maybe. But otherwise I would look to something faster.

Most of us have had poor experiences trying external drives over USB 3.0. Even though they show more than high enough Gb/s ratings, that is instantaneous and not sustained.

I tried it once for live camera recording and it couldn't keep up with two cameras after about 30min.

I then tried it once as an option to offload older footage for longer retainage time of footage and it took days and several instances of it failing before it completed.

If you are going to archive, best to do it with a NAS and not a USB.
 
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JonSnow

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What difference does it make if its a NAS or external drive as long as the storage is fast enough? Technically a 1gbps network NAS would be slower than a USB 3.0 5gbps.

My archive drive that I'm currently using is a 3gbps SATA drive connected to a 3gbps SATA port, the USB drive is faster.
 
wittaj

wittaj

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I am just sharing with you my experiences and anecdotal stories that I have read here. YMMV.

I have tried both and the time to transfer one TB of data was much faster over ethernet than it was USB 3.0. Both drives were WD Purple. The USB would scream high Mbps for awhile, then chug down to 15Mbps then speed up. It was struggling and took days.

SATA will be faster than USB, even though the USB is rated faster...
 
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MrRobinHood

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Did you try an external drive in the end @JonSnow?

Has anyone tried USB 3.2 external caddies? I'm thinking of the same thing so I can connect a 3.5" drive to an Elitedesk Mini.

Record to the nvme, then offload to the 3.5" drive.

Was looking at this icybox


Would be nice to be able to use the elitedesk mini I already have than find another new and bulkier PC to use just for the 3.5" drive.
 
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