Upgrading Hard Drive, and Moving Folder Locations

[Big Mike]

Hi all, long time lurker first time poster. I've really appreciated the wealth of knowledge on these forums over the years. With all the available YouTube videos online, this place is still the best BI resource available.

I'm upgrading my hard drive and changing my folder (Alerts, New, Stored) locations to align with what is recommended as the best practice here on these forums. There are a ton of great posts regarding folder locations and clips/archiving settings, but not so much when it comes to properly moving folder contents to their new location and updating the database.

What is the best way to move your alerts, clips, and storage to their new location? Is it as easy as copying your data to their new location, update your clips/archiving settings, and rebuild your database? I'm still using BI v4 and from what I can tell, you have to right click on the clip to bring up the database rebuild option.

Or is there a way to have BI move your clips and stored based on the new settings?

Thanks

 

[sebastiantombs]

To my knowledge BI will not move things for you. You can just copy the data to the new drive but be aware that if you have TB of video already that it can take days to move that much data from one drive to another. Another doge is to clone the old drive to the new drive then rearrange, probably increase, the partition size to match the new drive and add space to the directories in BI drive configuration. Whether you copy or clone BI needs to be shut down while that is happening.

When I upgrade drives I just start fresh. If there's anything on the old drive I need I just export it to to another, different, drive for archival purposes.

 

[Big Mike]

Thanks for the reply. I don't think I have any video that I need to save, starting fresh is not a bad idea. Going that route, what does the DB file think about all the missing video? I assume you need to regenerate the DB after the update to the settings, or do you delete the DB file and let BI create a new one?

When you say BI needs to be shut down, should I use "inactive" profile while copying files and making changes to the clips/archive settings, so no new clips are recorded during the process?

 

[sebastiantombs]

I would literally shut down BI. If you're running it as a service, go in and stop running it as a service and shut it down. The data base does need to be deleted and rebuilt once you install the new drive since there won't be any video that database has links to left on the system.

 

[Big Mike]

Wouldn't that leave a bunch useless crap in the database file? Does the database purge that stuff during nightly clean up?

I currently have my "alerts" and "new" folder on my SSD C drive along with Windows and BI. I have a 2tb HHD where the "stored" folder lives. I want to move the "new" folder to the new drive along with "stored" and have all video go to "new" until deleted based on space. I've seen a few posts saying that leaving the "alerts" folder on an SSD C drive is not a bad idea, which kinda makes sense speed wise, especially since I don't save alert JPEGS. Thoughts?

Thanks again

 

[sebastiantombs]

I said to delete and rebuild the database. That will make it current. I have no way of knowing where you're storing everything, alerts, continuous, snapshots, stored or whatever. By deleting the database BI will look at the newly allocated drive spaces/directories and rebuild the database by that information. You may loose some alerts or snapshots in the process but it shouldn't be a serious problem.

I keep everything other than the database on platter drives. I don't think you'll notice a big difference in response times regarding alerts. Further, if you're recoding 24/7, alerts are nothing more than markers in the database that locate the alert in the BVR file. I do have a "stored" directory too, but to be honest I've never had anything in it. If something does happen I simply export a clip of the incident and copy the appropriate BVR file. Both go on another platter drive. My thought being that the BVR file is an "original" in case things are needed in a legal proceeding. I have supplied video evidence three different times, so far, and burn it onto a DVD so it can't be easily tampered with.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Also don’t forget that if you have more than one HDD to clone the correct drive

When I upgraded my one of 2Tb drives with a 6Tb I accidentally cloned the wrong drive and then wondered why I had no old clips when I eventually restarted BI.

When I replaced the other 2Tb drive, I just stopped BI, replaced the 2 with the 8, formatted it, created the same folder structure on the new drive as the old, restarted BI, then did a rebuild of the database. Had to perform the rebuild a few times before things settled.

Kept the 2 intact just in case I needed to get any clips off it.

 

[Big Mike]

"I said to delete and rebuild the database" Sorry sebastiantombs I misread your previous post.

If I do a fresh install (recreate the file structure with empty folders on the new drive) and delete the database file, when I fire up BI, a new database file will be created and populated properly without any manual input by me, is that correct?

IAmATeaf, I can definitely see how cloning the wrong drive would wreak havoc on your system and possibly give you a heart attack lol.

Thanks for your replies!

 

[sebastiantombs]

Don't feel bad, I have a terrible habit of speed reading every other word sometimes and that can get really confused!

You know I'm not sure about that? I think the BI database will remain as it was given that it resides, typically, on the C:\ drive versus the files themselves being on a separate drive. In any event a delete and rebuild can't hurt and sure won't take long!

 

[looney2ns]

Don't feel bad, I have a terrible habit of speed reading every other word sometimes and that can get really confused!

You know I'm not sure about that? I think the BI database will remain as it was given that it resides, typically, on the C:\ drive versus the files themselves being on a separate drive. In any event a delete and rebuild can't hurt and sure won't take long!

Delete the database files, then BI will take it from there once you start it back up, with no input needed from you.

Here is best practices for storage.
Storage configuration | IP Cam Talk

 

[Big Mike]

Speed reading was definitely my issue lol...

Thank you looney2ns, that's what I was hoping.

 

[Big Mike]

Finally got my hard drive upgrade complete. Amazon sent me the wrong hard drive three times in a row. All three packages were labeled by Amazon as a Western Digital 8tb Purple drives, but the MFG sticker on the packages told a different story, two WD red drives and one WD black drive. All were new, just mislabeled by Amazon. Anyway, after two calls to Amazon customer service and two trips to the UPS store, I ordered a drive from New Egg and received the right drive the next day.

I wanted to update his thread with the procedure I used which was super easy and went smooth. I started fresh and kept all my recordings in their old lactations to be deleted later.

1. I first shut down the BI service, then shut down the computer and installed the hard drive.
2. I rebooted the computer, formatted the drive, and created the BI folder structure on the new drive (BlueIris folder containing the Alerts, New, and Stored folders.)
3. I restarted BI and put it into "Inactive" mode to keep it from creating any new video.
4. I modified the "Clips and Archiving" settings (db stayed on the C drive so no change there,) renamed my db folder and created a new empty db folder.
5. I Restarted BI and made sure new recording were now going into their new location, restarted the BI service and restarted BI.

I used the "Clips and Archiving" settings, and folder structure found in SouthernYankee"s general recommendations and his screen shot post listed below (which should be in the Wiki by the way.)

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Thanks for everyone's help!