Seeking input for NVR/BI hardware/computer

If you have a 4 cameras and your thinking about storage time. Like @looney2ns said, and 4-6 TB WD purple would easily give you 4 weeks.
I have 18 cams on 13 TB worth of storage, and looking at the calendar, i can go back 4-6 weeks depending. with ample free space on the drive for Virtual memory or File swapping or whatever it is Windows is doing.
 
The Dell Towers are so small now you'd have more room in a MT ( mini tower) than the SFF( small form factor) for a 2nd 3.5" HDD.
 
If you look at the HP Elitedesk G4-800 SFF, it natively supports 2-3.5" drive bays, laying right on top in the open. that carriage raises up to expose the NVME m.2 drive area ( i think)
page 27 shows a good image. and further down there are more images of the drives.
 
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Flintstone61 said:
The Dell precision tower 3630 supports up to 3 3.5" drives, and supports some of the newer graphics cards according to the .pdf manual on Dells support website.
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Thanks - I think this is the way. I looked at the manual (below) and it says it supports up to 3 x 3.5" SATA SSD/HDD.

Now how do you guys access Blue Iris on the NVR to configure it, etc.? I guess you have to use a monitor/mouse/keyboard at first and then maybe RDP?

For 3 x WD Purple drives, do you format them as one volume or keep them separate?

Flintstone61 said:
I have 18 cams on 13 TB worth of storage, and looking at the calendar, i can go back 4-6 weeks depending. with ample free space on the drive for Virtual memory or File swapping or whatever it is Windows is doing.
Click to expand...

I thought I did the calculator correctly? 3 EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-X (which are 4k/8MP) and then two AD410 doorbells w/ everything at 30FPS ... I get around a 7.5TB requirement or so for 14 days.
 
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30F/ps is not needed for surveillance. 15F/ps is fine. They key to good video is the shutter speed, exposure time, not frames per second. You're not making an Hollyweird Epic, you're making surveillance video.

The bit rate is another key factor when it comes to storage space requirements. The higher the bit rate, the bigger the video files.

I have 22 cameras, a mix of 2MP and 4MP, recording 24/7. The bit rate for the 2MP is 5120 and the bit rate for the 4MP is 10240. All cameras are set to 15F/ps. I have a total of 11.5TB of drive for video storage and get about 30 days worth depending on motion and scene changes.

It is customary to use each drive in a multi drive system as a separate drive and evenly allocate the cameras to those drives. It's a good idea to split cameras on the same side of the house to different drives. This offers some protection is a drive fails by preventing the loss of all video from, for example, from the front of the house cameras.

When formatting video storage drives the bloc size should be set to 1024 due to the size of video files. When allocating space for storage in Blue Iris leave about 5-10% of free space so Blue iris has some "wiggle room" when writing files. Each drive should have a Blue Iris directory with a New, Alerts ad Stored directory under it. That assumes you'll be storing alerts and "stored" as well. You can rename the "AUX" directories and use them as well to make identification of their contents easier. To rename them, double click on them in the list pane on the drive allocation page of the console.
 
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Flintstone61 said:
If you look at the HP Elitedesk G4-800 SFF, it natively supports 2-3.5" drive bays, laying right on top in the open. that carriage raises up to expose the NVME m.2 drive area ( i think)
page 27 shows a good image. and further down there are more images of the drives.
Click to expand...
You are correct in the location of the m.2 drive.
I just received my Ebay Elitedesk g4, after UPS's many shenanigan's the past 9 days.
 
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looney2ns said:
You are correct in the location of the m.2 drive.
I just received my Ebay Elitedesk g4, after UPS's many shenanigan's the past 9 days.
Click to expand...

Based on sebastiantombs storage comments I'll probably just go with the HP Elitedesk G4-800 SFF as well. Considerably more affordable than the Dell precision tower 3630.

On your G4, does windows boot from NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD? If so, I might just throw a 12 TB purple in there and call it a day.
 
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I think @fenderman nailed it when he recommended this Unit, as it checks all the boxes for an easy to use basic setup.
If you MUST have a MONSTER Gpu. then this is not the box.
I think you can put low profile Nvidia Quadro GPu's in the Elitedesk that won't over tax the powersupply requirements.
 
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bbdude513 said:
Based on sebastiantombs storage comments I'll probably just go with the HP Elitedesk G4-800 SFF as well. Considerably more affordable than the Dell precision tower 3630.

On your G4, does windows boot from NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD? If so, I might just throw a 12 TB purple in there and call it a day.
Click to expand...
Yes, very quickly.
The HP specs that was posted above states that only up to eight terabyte drives are supported, someone may come along that has actual experience with bigger drives than that proves otherwise.
 
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I’m new to this too. Glad I seen this post. I just bought an OptiPlex 7040 i5-5700 from eBay and was wondering what size HDD it could hold. Don’t know a lot about computers and I’m learning as I go. I just bought 4 cams from Andy during his sale and will be having about 8-10 total. I’m going to buy BI. I learned a lot from this forum just by reading they all the info.
 
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looney2ns said:
Yes, very quickly.
The HP specs that was posted above states that only up to eight terabyte drives are supported, someone may come along that has actual experience with bigger drives than that proves otherwise.
Click to expand...

Good call out ... missed that. Might have to role with two smaller purples then! Are you going to do two purples? Let me know how it goes, if you don't mind.
 
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I believe that 8GB was related to OS originally used, but could be wrong. Win10 has no problem recognizing, formatting and writing to 20GB + drives. The Os is the key.
 
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256gb m.2 drive, and a 2tb Wd Purple for testing.
It will have a 4tb purple in it when I get it to its final location. That drive will come out of the old Bl system, that proved to be a pain in the neck.
She has all 2mp cams, and 4 tb will give her over a month of retention.
 
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Been noodling on this for a while and reconsidering Blue Iris. Wondering if a Dahua NVR is more economical? Right now I have no network/PoE so looking at probably $550 or so to get my network components, rack them, CAT, etc. Then on top of that I'd have to buy HP Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF w/ HDD and then Blue Iris subscription and configure it all. So maybe $1k soup to nuts.

Would a Dahau NVR be 'easier' and more cost effective? Not sure if the 2 x Amcrest AD410s will place nice in Dahua NVR? Other cameras will be 3 x EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-X (4K 8MP). I could get a Dahua 4k NVR for <$500 and avoid the time I'd have to commit to setting up and configuring everything. Thoughts?
 
The basic difference, monetarily, between an NVR and Blue Iris is the cost of Blue Iris and a PoE switch, say about $200 bucks. An NVR still needs everything else, including the hard drive. On the other hand for that $200 you get a system that is, basically, unlimited in camera and bandwidth capability plus a much more powerful VMS. A decent NVR is in the $300+ range which compares to a used business class PC.
 
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When I was looking at replacing an existing NVR, once I realized that not all NVRs are created equal (the bandwidth it can process is a huge limiting factor), and once I priced out a good one, it was cheaper to buy a refurbished computer, POE switch and BI than an NVR.

Many of us buy refurbished computers that are business class computers that have come off lease. The one I bought I kid you not I could not tell that it was a refurbished unit - not a speck of dust or dents or scratches on it. It appeared to me like everything was replaced and I would assume just the motherboard with the intel processor is what was from the original unit. I went with the lowest end processor on the WIKI list as it was the cheapest and it runs my system fine. Could probably get going for $200 or so. A real NVR will cost more than that.

A member here a couple months ago found a refurbished 4th generation for less than $150USD that came with Win10 PRO, 16GB RAM, and a 1TB drive. You won't find a capable NVR cheaper than that...

Most of us that have had NVRs and BI will say that the time to setup properly is about the same.
 
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