Please review my archiving layout and comment

[Shark92651]

My BI server has a 256GB SSD configured as C: for OS and BI software, and 2 10TB WD Purples configured as drives D: and E:

Initially I setup my Clips and Archiving like this:

DB is at c:\BlueIris\db

New is c:\BlueIris\New - limit 10GB, 7 days - Move to Stored
Stored is c:\BlueIris\Stored - limit 20 GB, 14 days - Move to Archive1
Archive1 is d:\BlueIris - limit 8000 GB - Move to Archive2
Archive2 is e:\BlueIris - limit 8000 GB - Delete

After a little use and reviewing of my settings, I decided to eliminate use of the Stored folder. I guess I don't see any point in moving the file pointers around on the same drive for no reason. So now I changed it to this:

New is c:\BlueIris\New - limit 80GB, 21 days - Move to Archive1
Archive1 is d:\BlueIris - limit 8000 GB - Move to Archive2
Archive2 is e:\BlueIris - limit 8000 GB - Delete

My thinking now is up to 21 days of fast access on the SSD (generally anything worth reviewing/flagging happens in that time period anyway), then move to the first purple drive, when that drive is full, move files to the 2nd purple drive, when that one is full, delete the oldest. I want to get maximum usage out of all of my drives without depleting all of the disk space. These settings will leave about 20% of the drive space available on all drives.

Is this a good scheme? Any recommended changes?

Next question, now that I eliminated the use of the Stored folder, I want to manually move all those files to New or Archive1. If I do that, do I need to run some sort of utility or action in order to update the database of the change?

Thanks,
David

 

[sebastiantombs]

1 - Do not write video to the SSD drive. SSD life is based on write operations and video writes constantly.

2 - Why move anything, anywhere. Set up a directory structure for BI, as in the names BI uses, on the two purple drives and simply split your cameras, more or less equally, between them. Clean, simple and no moving files at all.

3- Do not use time for limits on storage. Use size only and leave about 10& free for "overhead" space to prevent over allocation errors.

4 - Set "combine and cut" to 1GB to make reviewing video much simpler.

I'm sure @SouthernYankee wil pop in here with his excellent advice as well.

I use that basic setup, with a few special purpose cameras writing to the AUX folders, and it's very easy to maintain, set and forget, and makes reviewing things very easy.

 

[Shark92651]

1 - Do not write video to the SSD drive. SSD life is based on write operations and video writes constantly.

2 - Why move anything, anywhere. Set up a directory structure for BI, as in the names BI uses, on the two purple drives and simply split your cameras, more or less equally, between them. Clean, simple and no moving files at all.

3- Do not use time for limits on storage. Use size only and leave about 10& free for "overhead" space to prevent over allocation errors.

4 - Set "combine and cut" to 1GB to make reviewing video much simpler.

I'm sure @SouthernYankee wil pop in here with his excellent advice as well.

I use that basic setup, with a few special purpose cameras writing to the AUX folders, and it's very easy to maintain, set and forget, and makes reviewing things very easy.

Thanks for the input.

1 - Interesting, I guess that makes sense, but I have also seen lots of suggestions about leaving the most recent on SSD for faster access. Is there much difference between the SSD or the Purples to justify shortening the life of the SSD?
2 - That is a good suggestion, then it will be delete only on the purples. The only down side is I have about 50 cameras to tweak, but it's fairly easy to switch the settings in BI as long as I don't have to log into the cameras.
3 - Yes, that makes a lot of sense as well.
4 - I currently have them set to combine or cut every 8 hrs or 4 GB. How does switching this to 1GB affect the UI of reviewing video?

Any idea about my other question - If I move video files around manually after making changes do I need to do something to update the database, or does it just find the files automatically or what?

 

[sebastiantombs]

The SSD drive can certainly read and write much, much, faster than a purple. The problem is that the writes on an SSD are limited. Video is constantly writing, it never stops, so that SSD drive will have its life shortened dramatically with no real gain in speed. The biggest lags are from CPU for decoding and "painting" a picture. Keeping the database on the SSD is fine, but video is a whole other problem.

Setting combine and cut to 1GB makes it easy to get to a specific time in a video based off an alert or other time reference. At least I find it very convenient.

If you move things around, you will need to rebuild the database.

 

[bp2008]

Any regularly functioning hard drive is plenty fast enough for Blue Iris video clips. You probably would not even notice a speed difference.

On my continuous recording box, I set combine and cut to a 1 hour interval, not a file size limit.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Thanks, Brian. Sometimes the old brain confuses terms. I am set to one hour for simplicity when reviewing clips, not 1GB.

 

[looney2ns]

Proudly plagiarized from @SouthernYankee