Moving and upgrading my camera system.

Hound Dog 911

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I took your recommendations on here to get a used Dell for my Blue Iris server. It lacks expansion for hard drive space. Wondering what your thoughts were on expansion ideas? Are there network drives that it can be set to dump to? Would it be best to just get a 10 or 12tb and swap out the 4tb? Trust me, I'll have plenty of other questions coming soon. Can't wait to get moved in to figure out my cable runs. Thanks in advance.
 

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Hound Dog 911

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Need to pick up some good solid cat6 for the new place. What to get? Buy once cry once but not overkil.
 

fenderman

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That is the problem with the dell sff there is no expansion room. The HP elite desk and pro desk small for factors have more room
 

Hound Dog 911

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That is the problem with the dell sff there is no expansion room. The HP elite desk and pro desk small for factors have more room
Yeah man. I'm figuring I will have to just replace the drive. I hate losing storage.
 

Hound Dog 911

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What would you recommend if you were to replace it? I feel an nvr is going backwards.
 

Hound Dog 911

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Just went down and pulled my BI pc apart. Back when my main HD died on me I replaced it with a much smaller form factor. I just took out the the old HD and now have room to run another WD purple drive. So I will have a 4tb and another likely 8tb at least to dump to.
 

pozzello

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i've added a second drive (SSD) to several SFF Dell's. there's an unused SATA port on the MB, so an extra Sata cable and a replacement power cable with an extra connector on it does the trick. If adding an SSD, space isn't a problem. stick it anywhere with some double-sided tape.
 

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I have used several ways to add drives to HP SFF PC.
Double sticky tape is good if you have a tyewrap or something to back it up.
Also some times you can use the frame beside the main drive to attach to.
Might have to drill a hole and mount the second drive, then mount the old drive.
 

Hound Dog 911

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Whenever the original drive failed I had a heck of a time getting it out. Some how I ordered the wrong HD size. Heck it may be a laptop hard drive for all I know. Regardless I got the original dead one out and now have room for the second. We have soo much to do to get ready to move. It's going to suck. Thanks for sharing your experience.
 

SouthernYankee

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Please provide a review of what you have in the BI PC?
From what I read you have a 4TB and 8TB drive AND 2 SSD .
What is your planed configuration ?
How manay cameras ?
What is the total MP/SEC for the complete system ?
 

Hound Dog 911

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Just a 4 and now adding an 8tb wd purple. The processor is a little underpowered by the latest specs of what I've read on here but have not had an issue. I think it came with 8gb of memory and did upgrade to 16 awhile back. I'll have 8 cams from Andy and will likely pick up 2 more eventually. 4 are the 2mp varifocal starlight, 1 ptz starlight sd59225u-hni, and some lower end dahua's I had in our kennel to watch puppies. All record 24/7. Only issue I had was the os HD died last year. Side from that it's been solid.
 
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SouthernYankee

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Is the OS and BI on an SSD. That is recommended.
You can (not recommended ) use a USB harddrive for the STORE folder drive as it is not being written to continuously. I would put the 8TB drive in the case and the 4TB drive as the USB.
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My Standard allocation post.

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. Really big files are difficult to transfer.
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. Do not run virus scanners on BI folders

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.
 

Hound Dog 911

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When my c: drive died in accidentally bought the drive listed below. It has run fine as it is only used for the operating system and the actual BI program. I don't run anti-virus on my BI machine and do not use it for browsing the internet or anything other than accessing my cams via their ip address. I was planning on recording to the 4tb drive then copying to the 8tb. I have room to run both drives internally it looks like. I'll use your recommendations when I do the new setup at our new home.

Seagate BarraCuda 1TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 2.5 Inch SATA 6 Gb/s 5400 RPM 128MB Cache for PC Laptop
 

Hound Dog 911

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As I sit here staring at pictures of our new home at 3am I have questions running through my head. Most of my cams are the 2mp turret starlights purchased about 4 years ago. Do you place them as close to the wall as possible and point them to just miss the side of your house? Further away from the wall so you can see some of your house? One. Side is a good distance up making for realistic entrance difficult without a tall ladder. But a basement entrance that side so thinking wall mounting that camera lower instead of soffit mount. I think I am picking up at least one 4mp off Andy for the driveway but cross it up with a 2mp starlight. I have no idea where to mount my Sd59225u-hni where it's not an eye sore. I am trying to do as little structural alterations to the home installing my system. Some of these questions will certainly be easier when we move in the place.
 
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