RAID 0 vs. multiple drives

[luder888]

I have a 4TB (Internal) and two 3TB drives (via USB) for BI. I set up each of the drive as New, Stored, and Archive. The OS is running on its own SSD drive. As the drives fill up BI is constantly moving files from one drive to another, thus affecting playback performance if the clip being played is on a drive currently having files moved.

I see in Windows 10 you can merge a few drives to make it one large drive (RAID 0). Will this increase BI performance as files don't need to be moved around constantly? What are the drawback to RAID 0 compared to my current setup?

 

[Mr_D]

Raid 0 is great until anything goes wrong and you lose the entire volume.

 

[Tinman]

Why even use the store method and waste performance by having BI move files all the time....just delete them.

 

[luder888]

Just delete them? How else can I utilize all the spaces of all the drives? Put separate cameras onto different drives?

 

[Tinman]

Just delete them? How else can I utilize all the spaces of all the drives? Put separate cameras onto different drives?

That is exactly what I do and I try to select the cams so that if one drive fails the other cam will sort of keep you covered. Its better than having all your cams in one basket.

 

[luder888]

That is exactly what I do and I try to select the cams so that if one drive fails the other cam will sort of keep you covered. Its better than having all your cams in one basket.

How did you set it up? Just set up different "groups" in Clips and Archiving and then in the Record tab of the cameras you just record to that group? Also, with this setup, wouldn't the footage for some of your cameras be kept longer than others since they all use slightly different amount of space?

I do like this better as I can group the cameras in a way that I get redundant coverage, so that if one of the drives fails I won't lose all the clips of a particular time frame (as in my current setup).

 

[Tinman]

I run all Dahua cams with some running at a little higher fps, but you will have to play with it and see how close the drives stay together. If one drive is filling up quicker then move a cam from other drive there. I should mention, I do use continuous recording on almost all of my cams, this does keep things more constant. You just select which drive you want each cam to record to. In your case you would have New - Aux1 - Aux2 setup under "clips & archiving"

 

[SouthernYankee]

I have an internal 4 TB drive, I recorded all cameras to this drive. I have a NAS I record all cameras to it also.

Set aux 1 to the NAS.

In BI I create a copy of an existing camera and set the record folder to aux1. Set camera to hidden.

The odds of needing video from 60 days ago is small. The odds of needing a copy of a video after you bi computer is stolen is a lot higher. Or after your primary video drive fails.

 

[Tinman]

I forgot to mention you can also check the "limit clip age" and set what you want for each drive as well to keep them in more in sync. I myself don't worry too much about that.

 

[Tinman]

I have an internal 4 TB drive, I recorded all cameras to this drive. I have a NAS I record all cameras to it also.

Set aux 1 to the NAS.

In BI I create a copy of an existing camera and set the record folder to aux1. Set camera to hidden.

Wow, you really have your ass covered that way

 

[luder888]

I forgot to mention you can also check the "limit clip age" and set what you want for each drive as well to keep them in more in sync. I myself don't worry too much about that.

I have 12 cameras of different resolution. I too record continuously. I'll spend some time to calculate the GB/day usage for each camera and then place them in different groups based on how much storage they use in order to keep the duration fairly constant among them while storing them on different drives.

 

[zlandar]

I use Drivepool:

StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner

Software lets you add/subtract mutliple hard drives into one big virtual drive. Unlike RAID files are saved intact on each hard drive so zero chance one drive going bad will brick an array like RAID.

 

[bp2008]

I use Drivepool:

StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner

Software lets you add/subtract mutliple hard drives into one big virtual drive. Unlike RAID files are saved intact on each hard drive so zero chance one drive going bad will brick an array like RAID.

I used that too and was very happy with it.

 

[luder888]

I just installed the trial version and set up a DrivePool. Thanks for the suggestion this seems like an awesome piece of software.

 

[luder888]

Let's say I have a drive N: that I want to add to the drive pool. Drive N: is a 3TB drive with a bunch of other files already on it. I want to only add 1TB to the drive pool while leaving 2TB. Is there a way I can do that?

 

[CCTVCam]

I'm not familiar with the technical in-and outs of BI, but can't you set the destination drive to be your hard drive and not the SSD?

Although SSD's are much much tougher than many people make out, they still won't take constant writes for years on end. Moving the files is doing nothing but freeing up space, not stopping wear. You really need the videos files to write directly to the hard drive storage and not the SSD.

As for RAID, when you RAID you double the chance of failure because if either drive fails, you lose everything. You can guard against this by using a RAID / STRIPE arrangement, where the info on each RAID drive is mirrored to another drive so if one fails, the information required for RAID is still present and the DATA recoverable. However, this requires 4 drives not two. To confirm, RAID does speed access and write times considerably. However, there's little to be gained in this scenario unless a single drive is bottle necked at the write end.

 

[zlandar]

Let's say I have a drive N: that I want to add to the drive pool. Drive N: is a 3TB drive with a bunch of other files already on it. I want to only add 1TB to the drive pool while leaving 2TB. Is there a way I can do that?

If you partition the 3 TB HD into a 1 TB partition for BI and a 2 TB for the other files yes.

I would just leave the files there instead of doing that though. Drivepool by default will spread out new files over all your drives.

 

[Tinman]

BI will do this without having to buy more software and have something else running on the BI machine...just my 2 cents.

 

[CCTVCam]

If you partition the 3 TB HD into a 1 TB partition for BI and a 2 TB for the other files yes.

I would just leave the files there instead of doing that though. Drivepool by default will spread out new files over all your drives.

BI will do this without having to buy more software and have something else running on the BI machine...just my 2 cents.

If BI doesn't allow you to choose a destination folder for your recordings on a drive other than that on which the BI software itself is mounted, I suggest you request this as feature. As someone who runs all my PC programs on an SSD and my data on a hard drive, I find this quite unusual in this day and age.

 

[fenderman]

If BI doesn't allow you to choose a destination folder for your recordings on a drive other than that on which the BI software itself is mounted, I suggest you request this as feature. As someone who runs all my PC programs on an SSD and my data on a hard drive, I find this quite unusual in this day and age.

BI does allow you to select ANY drive you want to record to...you can record to 9 different folder locations all of which can be different drives...you can independently select which cameras record to ANY of these folders...you can set different size limits for each of these folders and have blue iris delete or move the footage when the limit is reached. it goes a step further and allows you to change the folders/drives based on profile settings (either scheduled or manually selected). Blue iris is exceptionally customizable, more so than vms suites that cost 10-50 times more. It makes a standalone NVR seem like a kids toy.
Most users here run an ssd for their bi machines...its even suggested by the developer in the hardware requirements listed on the site.