Unused Allocated Disk Storage

ptzguy

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About a year ago I added a 4TB D: drive to my system and moved the New and Stored folders there. About two months ago, I decided to take advantage of the 800+ GB of storage that was freed up on the C: drive.

This seems to be working fine. I use variable bit rate (VBR) and low frame rates (5-10 FPS) and get about 9 days of storage with 16 main 5MP cameras and 5 more non-critical cams recording continuously and using alerts.

My problem is that there appears to be some available allocated space that never gets used. If it were used, I think I could get another day or two of recordings.
 

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sebastiantombs

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Simplest way is to eliminate the "limit clip age" setting and let BI manage storage by size only. I do it that way, as do most here on IPCT, and never have any free allocated space as a result. You do need to leave 10% or so of the drive unallocated so there's some "wiggle room" for BI to work with.
 

ptzguy

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Simplest way is to eliminate the "limit clip age" setting and let BI manage storage by size only. I do it that way, as do most here on IPCT, and never have any free allocated space as a result. You do need to leave 10% or so of the drive unallocated so there's some "wiggle room" for BI to work with.
Thanks. I think I tried that, but it didn't seem to make any difference. I'll turn it off just to be sure.
I should have enough unallocated disk space.
 

sebastiantombs

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Let it run for a while with "limit clip age" unchecked nd it'll look like this (the J:/ drive here is strictly for alerts and not fully allocated deliberately) -

storage space.JPG
 

ptzguy

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I was thinking that it would not matter whether or not that box was checked since I'm only getting about 8-9 days of recordings. Thus it would never reach the 30-day limit.
 

ptzguy

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Typically the guys here talk about not using stored at all for most use case scenarios. Some people use it though.
I thought that it would give me a few days of extra storage. It looks like it is doing what I intended.
 

sebastiantombs

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Do not store video on the boot drive. Allocate drive space up to a maximum of 10% of the formatted size of the drive. Do not move from "new" to stored", there is no gain by doing so and only a loss due to added CPU and drive loading. If you have more than one drive dedicated to video storage only split the cameras between the drives allocating them so that if one drive fails you don't lose every camera from the front of the house, for example. If you need to archive something either run an export and save that to a separate directory on another drive and copy the .bvr file for evidentiary purposes. Use a combine and cut of one hour to minimize search times when looking for something that happened.
 

ptzguy

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Do not store video on the boot drive. Allocate drive space up to a maximum of 10% of the formatted size of the drive. Do not move from "new" to stored", there is no gain by doing so and only a loss due to added CPU and drive loading. If you have more than one drive dedicated to video storage only split the cameras between the drives allocating them so that if one drive fails you don't lose every camera from the front of the house, for example. If you need to archive something either run an export and save that to a separate directory on another drive and copy the .bvr file for evidentiary purposes. Use a combine and cut of one hour to minimize search times when looking for something that happened.
Ah! Thanks for the advice. I'll get to work on that.
 
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