How many Terabytes?

[Oceanslider]

Great writeup about putting together a dedicated Blue Iris computer here: Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris

What do most Blue Iris users do regarding storage of recorded footage?

Let’s say you have 4-5 cameras that you want to record, say, two weeks of continuous footage. How many TB of storage space should one have for this scenario?

 

[Walrus]

I depends on what MP cams you get and what bitrate you set them at. I have three 2MP cams, set to 6144 bitrate (a little higher than recommended) and an 8TB drive. I get 5.5 weeks of footage.

Edit: Use the ipcamtalk calculator:
https://ipcamtalk.com/tools/calculators/hdd/

 

[crw030]

Buy as big as you can afford and consider how many drives your selected PC can hold as well. For example, choosing a 4TB drive if your system only supports a single 3.5" drive you will eventually face storage challenges (more cameras/higher rez/continuous recording will lead to filling that drive more quickly). I have 3 x 4TB drives, and usable capacity is approx 10.9GB and I mostly have 2MP cameras, half at very low frame rate. I get months on that setup.

I echo @Walrus it's all about average bitrate, using either the Blue Iris bitrate that is available in status and/or the cameras maximum configured bitrate to gauge the number of days you can store on each size HDD.
I just type estimated numbers into Google:

• 2MP-15fps-VBR-4096br --> "70 kB/s * 30 days" = 181GB "512 kB/s * 30 days" = 1.3TB
• 4MP-15fps-VBR-8192br --> "1024kB/s * 30 days" = 2.65GB , "760kB/s * 30 days" = 1.97GB

 

[Oceanslider]

Buy as big as you can afford and consider how many drives your selected PC can hold as well. For example, choosing a 4TB drive if your system only supports a single 3.5" drive you will eventually face storage challenges (more cameras/higher rez/continuous recording will lead to filling that drive more quickly). I have 3 x 4TB drives, and usable capacity is approx 10.9GB and I mostly have 2MP cameras, half at very low frame rate. I get months on that setup.

I echo @Walrus it's all about average bitrate, using either the Blue Iris bitrate that is available in status and/or the cameras maximum configured bitrate to gauge the number of days you can store on each size HDD.
I just type estimated numbers into Google:

• 2MP-15fps-VBR-4096br --> "70 kB/s * 30 days" = 181GB "512 kB/s * 30 days" = 1.3TB
• 4MP-15fps-VBR-8192br --> "1024kB/s * 30 days" = 2.65GB , "760kB/s * 30 days" = 1.97GB

Thanks , also to Walrus,
I'm looking at the recommended Optiplex's and EliteDesks on the build page I linked above. And from researching it looks like they are limited in drive bays. Where you might typically have 1 - 3.5" bay and 1 - 2.5" bay, or so it seems from my research so far.

You obviously have a RAID 5 yes? So do you link a NAS or server to your Blue Iris PC?

I have an old HP N40L that I plan on taking offline and replacing with a Qnap NAS within the next month or two. The N40L has a RAID controller I installed with four 4tb drives with 10.9tb total. I was planning on moving this over to the NAS.

But I think I really should have a separate storage pool for security cameras only and was thinking of just getting a single 8tb or 10tb drive for starters. Am I wrong or do most BI users just have a single large drive? Or two large drives in RAID 1.

Do guys use the WD Red(or red/white label) drives that can be shucked from the Easystore as a drive for Video Surveillance? Or do you really need a specific drive?

 

[crw030]

You obviously have a RAID 5 yes? So do you link a NAS or server to your Blue Iris PC?

No just lost capacity during the formatting process and I am running a drive app that isn't typically used around here. The general guidance is against RAID and just to split cameras between drives to level-load them. You don't have the fault tolerance, but it's security video not critical business data.

I was planning on moving this over to the NAS.

Some people here have used NAS storage etc, but guidance is to just Keep It Simple and throw a hard drive in a dedicated Blue Iris machine (like you were thinking).

Do guys use the WD Red(or red/white label) drives that can be shucked from the Easystore as a drive for Video Surveillance?

Just depends, the "Surveillance Drives" should have the best longevity, but I know there were plenty of members picking up and shucking Easystores they grabbed during Black-Friday & Cyber-Monday. TECHNICALLY the surveillance drives are marketed for this market with intended usage of 24x7x365. PRACTICALLY, I wouldn't sweat it either way, it's a brand new drive.

Any modest increase of failure chance going from a Purple (surveillance) to a Red/White is pretty easy to look past when you are lucky enough to grab a Red at HALF the price.
For comparison:

• 12TB Purple has estimated 1.5M MTBF and annual workload of 30*drive capacity (completely writing the whole drive over 30 times).
• 12TB Red has estimated 1.0M MTBF hours and annual workload of 15*drive capacity (completely writing the whole drive over 15 times)

reference: Purple WD Specs Red WD Specs
Even for our use case, you likely got other things to worry about. If they were within a few bucks of each other I'd lean Surveillance, but if you are shucking Easystores, you are getting 2-3x the capacity in Red/Whites per dollar which won't hurt you either.

 

[SouthernYankee]

There have been a number of posts on raid. In general raid is a bad idea. They fail more often, more part more failures.writing is what IP video requires, each write on the raid doubles the number of writes.

To improve reliability, used multiple internal disks. Configured so that some cameras write to one disk, and other cameras write to another disk. Do not move files between disks, do not move from new to stored.

 

[Oceanslider]

No just lost capacity during the formatting process and I am running a drive app that isn't typically used around here. The general guidance is against RAID and just to split cameras between drives to level-load them. You don't have the fault tolerance, but it's security video not critical business data.


Some people here have used NAS storage etc, but guidance is to just Keep It Simple and throw a hard drive in a dedicated Blue Iris machine (like you were thinking).


Just depends, the "Surveillance Drives" should have the best longevity, but I know there were plenty of members picking up and shucking Easystores they grabbed during Black-Friday & Cyber-Monday. TECHNICALLY the surveillance drives are marketed for this market with intended usage of 24x7x365. PRACTICALLY, I wouldn't sweat it either way, it's a brand new drive.

Any modest increase of failure chance going from a Purple (surveillance) to a Red/White is pretty easy to look past when you are lucky enough to grab a Red at HALF the price.
For comparison:

• 12TB Purple has estimated 1.5M MTBF and annual workload of 30*drive capacity (completely writing the whole drive over 30 times).
• 12TB Red has estimated 1.0M MTBF hours and annual workload of 15*drive capacity (completely writing the whole drive over 15 times)

reference: Purple WD Specs Red WD Specs
Even for our use case, you likely got other things to worry about. If they were within a few bucks of each other I'd lean Surveillance, but if you are shucking Easystores, you are getting 2-3x the capacity in Red/Whites per dollar which won't hurt you either.

Awesome. Thanks for answering those questions. make perfect sense.

 

[Oceanslider]

There have been a number of posts on raid. In general raid is a bad idea. They fail more often, more part more failures.writing is what IP video requires, each write on the raid doubles the number of writes.

To improve reliability, used multiple internal disks. Configured so that some cameras write to one disk, and other cameras write to another disk. Do not move files between disks, do not move from new to stored.

If you felt it somewhat critical RAID 1 does not seem a bad idea. I getting however that a simple pc setup like an Optiplex or EliteDesk with an SSD for the OS and a single larger drive like 8tb, 10tb, or 12tb is the way to go.

 

[bp2008]

Beware the results of a CCTV storage calculator that does not tell you what bit rate you need to set in your cameras in order to achieve the expected results. Shame on Western Digital for leaving that out.

IpCamTalk has a storage calculator that doesn't try to hide this. Calculating Required Hard Drive Size

To be fair, this calculator is not perfect either, but it will help you estimate an appropriate bit rate to set in your cameras and it will not hide this number from you.