SSD's? Safe and reliable for video server???
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fenderman
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You dont need to save video to the ssd. Get a 50 dollar 250gb drive for the OS, blue iris and the database. You wont have any problems. Buy a reliable brand and series, like the crucial mx500. You wont have any problems and the performance difference will be night and day. Every pc and every blue iris server should have one.
OK-- I thought BI recommends the "New" folder as well as DB be on the C drive..... ???
EDIT:
key word: should --- If I used the current 1tb drive as the "new" folder, and the WD Purple continues as Store-- then I'm just as fast as before.
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fenderman
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You dont need to place the new folder on the ssd. You can. The 1tb mx500 for example has a 360TB write endurance rating. It can probably go much higher before you see issues. So even if you write 10tb a month that is 3 years+, and likely much much longer.
OK--- Someone else did a new build and had a 1TB NVME drive-- assumed the reason was that putting New on anything but C is asking for BI trouble... Thanks for clarifying this! Instead of spending $160 or so on a 1TB drive-- they could get a 250 and another low-end camera.
I personally think NVME is probably overkill for Blue Iris machine. If you think about one key benefit (boot time), on a machine that's already running 24x7 boot time isn't a major factor of the performance. I'd still consider a small SATA SSD because when you do need to patch/restart it's just so fast compared to traditional HDD. The only reason to add NVME imho is convenient workaround because SATA connectors on the board may be limited, or for a super-clean gaming PC build or such.
In an upcoming build I am dealing with this decision. I will have 6-onboard NVME connectors and 14 SATA ports available. I might use small high quality NVME boot drive just to preserve the onboard SATA ports for bigger SSD/HDD (swap[ssd/nvme], Programs[ssd], Video[hdd] and Blue Iris DB[ssd/nvme]) and because they are basically the same price as SATA SSD in (boot size) capacities. But I wouldn't be doing it for boot performance reasons.
In an upcoming build I am dealing with this decision. I will have 6-onboard NVME connectors and 14 SATA ports available. I might use small high quality NVME boot drive just to preserve the onboard SATA ports for bigger SSD/HDD (swap[ssd/nvme], Programs[ssd], Video[hdd] and Blue Iris DB[ssd/nvme]) and because they are basically the same price as SATA SSD in (boot size) capacities. But I wouldn't be doing it for boot performance reasons.
IAmATeaf
Known around here
Any process that needs to interact with the disk will benefit from an SSD and not just the boot up process.
Regardless of use I’d never consider a standard drive as a boot drive ever. All of my desktops, laptops and my VM server all have an SSD as the boot drive.
Regardless of use I’d never consider a standard drive as a boot drive ever. All of my desktops, laptops and my VM server all have an SSD as the boot drive.
SouthernYankee
IPCT Contributor
A side note:
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continuous 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 writes, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
I like a lot of people on the forum use the SSD for the C drive, windows OS and all BI files except the recorded video. I use a Samsung Evo 250GB. I have had zeo problems with the EVO. I have had a Kingston 240GB die, it just got slower and slower as it was trying to recover errors.
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continuous 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 writes, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
I like a lot of people on the forum use the SSD for the C drive, windows OS and all BI files except the recorded video. I use a Samsung Evo 250GB. I have had zeo problems with the EVO. I have had a Kingston 240GB die, it just got slower and slower as it was trying to recover errors.
Is there a downside to this? Does it impact some other aspect of disk operation? Should I consider doing that to the 4TB Purple installed in that box for the Store folder?
I have done a LOT of SSD installs to replace old slow hard drives. I just ordered another 250 EVO about an hour ago for my BI server...
SouthernYankee
IPCT Contributor
I have tested the use of 1024 K cluster size on a number of BI systems internal drives and have seen less fragmentation over time. I have never tested large clusters on a USB or NAS drive. The down side to using large clusters is that it wastes space of small files. Most of my video files are between 2GB and 4GB.
The primary reason to use large cluster sizes is for reducing fragmentation on files that are growing over time. A video drive has multiple files being extended simultaneously over time.
Test do not guess.
The primary reason to use large cluster sizes is for reducing fragmentation on files that are growing over time. A video drive has multiple files being extended simultaneously over time.
Test do not guess.
Thanks to your frequent guidance on this I recently remembered to do this for my video storage drives. Hoping it helps, with video files being so big I'm banking on the performance of less fragmented files will be a big performance boost while watching clips etc.
One definite impact is more slack/wasted space on the disk. Think of cluster size as the smallest increment of storage, so if you select something small you have less wasted space when a file is slightly too big for a cluster, but you can have a file broken into thousands of little fragments over time (at least for working files).
Since video is basically contiguous recording of several hundred megabytes (likely more), stopping at the next 1024k cluster isn't such a big deal.
One place I have to put some thought into is the JPEG Alerts, you may have to look at your own situation but most of my alert images are 250-400kB which means 50-60% of each cluster would be wasted so might not want such a large cluster size in that case, as the alerts folder would balloon in size if you have a lot of them.
Ahhh.... I have BI recording a jpeg every 10 minutes on all cameras. I would need to figure out a different way to do that-- or that cluster size would waste a LOT of space.... those pics are 530k on my newest 4mp cameras. That would be 2 gb per week-- roughly. I could dedicate 10 gb of space and keep a good 5 week collection of photos to use for time lapse.... just send them to a different physical drive to not waste space on my video drive.
Yeah, same boat. I'd just put those images on a different drive with a smaller cluster size. 10GB isn't that much to reserve somewhere else, but in my case of 22k alerts, it would make the difference between 6GB used or 22GB used, but now reading that 22GB isn't really a big deal, just a lot more wasted space.
IAmATeaf
Known around here
You could split the partitioning of the disk, so a 10gb part with a standard cluster size and the rest with 1m?