UPS for use with Blue Iris system

[sebastiantombs]

My solution is to rebuild the system with one extra platter drive, install the free version of Macrium and run a clone, either weekly or daily, of your boot drive. Instant recovery that way, just point to that cloned drive for the boot drive in the BiOS.

 

[moparcruiser]

Oh well.....some days you are the bird, some days you are the worm.

The last few days I have been the worm. LOL

Hopefully the rebuild goes smoothly.

I will have to download BI again etc but that is probably gonna be the EASIEST part.

Yank the second nic
Yank the storage drive (already disconnected so I could diagnose)
Reinstall windows 10,
Install the video card I am using
Install the second nic
Install the storage drive (I cant remember what drive letter I used of course)
Install BI
Reconfigure.....EVERYTHING

If I point BI to the same folder etc I was using on the storage drive, it should pickup there right?

 

[moparcruiser]

My solution is to rebuild the system with one extra platter drive, install the free version of Macrium and run a clone, either weekly or daily, of your boot drive. Instant recovery that way, just point to that cloned drive for the boot drive in the BiOS.

Could I not use a second SSDD as the backup system drive if I wanted to go that expense?

I have not heard of "Macrium"......almost sounds like a MAC product? LOL

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

That said, looks like my system drive is toast ---- mobo is not seeing it at bootup and it is making some fun noises during power up.......I am gonna go grab a SSDD drive locally and begin rebuilding I guess.

You said the drive is not recognized at start-up, but does the BIOS still recognize it?

One of the better $60 I've spent, HDD re-generator: HDD Regenerator - Dmitriy Primochenko Online It creates a bootable CD/DVD. Attach the ill drive and boot the system, and answer a few prompts then let the software do its thing. This can take hours, as it inspects every sector on the drive.

If... IF... the drive is recognized at the hardware level (BIOS) and it's not making any abnormal clicking noises. Good chance the program will, make the drive readable as a slave (possibly bootable). Harvest everything you can and move it to a healthy, new drive.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Macrium is backup software. Yes, you could use a second SSD for the clone drive. I use an M2 drive for a boot and a spare 500GB platter drive I had hanging around for the clone. If the M2 fails the platter drive will only get used until a replacement for the M2 gets installed. Besides, how often do you actually boot a BI PC? Yes boot and everything else is faster, too, with an M2 or SSD but in a crunch, who cares? Fast recovery is the key to me, anyway. YMMV as always.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

Yank the second nic
Yank the storage drive (already disconnected so I could diagnose)
Reinstall windows 10,
Install the video card I am using
Install the second nic
Install the storage drive (I cant remember what drive letter I used of course)
Install BI
Reconfigure.....EVERYTHING

Clonezilla is a great open source (free) option for disk cloning & imaging activities. For some of my 'regular' machines, I will snap an image of the drive at different stages of the build. I.E., Right after OS is installed, after all system specific drivers are loaded/configured, after applications are installed/updated/configured. In the unfortunate event I have drive issues, or catch sumthin' nasty... wipe/replace the drive and push the image to the drive. Image restore is MUCH less time than going through the full install process again.

This is an offline process where you boot from the clonezilla CD/DVD and create an image file to a spare/aux drive.

 

[moparcruiser]

You said the drive is not recognized at start-up, but does the BIOS still recognize it?

One of the better $60 I've spent, HDD re-generator: HDD Regenerator - Dmitriy Primochenko Online It creates a bootable CD/DVD. Attach the ill drive and boot the system, and answer a few prompts then let the software do its thing. This can take hours, as it inspects every sector on the drive.

If... IF... the drive is recognized at the hardware level (BIOS) and it's not making any abnormal clicking noises. Good chance the program will, make the drive readable as a slave (possibly bootable). Harvest everything you can and move it to a healthy, new drive.

Oh it is making some noise...LOL...not as bad as i have ever heard but bad enough to know there is something unhappy in there.....sigh

It was old.....so it is what it is ....I just wish I had thought to backup to another drive like y'all are saying. I had planned to......"when I got a round tuit".

 

[sebastiantombs]

Yeah, "round tuits" can be hard to find at times.

 

[moparcruiser]

Yeah, "round tuits" can be hard to find at times.

Exactly!

Square ones? Easy.

Round.....now that is a challenge.

To make things more interesting I realized I forgot my hips password.

Luckily so far the windows dvd is booting up..... hopeful that it will see my new ssd

 

[moparcruiser]

....and of course I can't find my activation code sticker.

Hoping the windows servers see my system and ok it .

 

[Dramus]

SO I am looking at the APC 1500 units.....with powerchute.

Just so you know: Increased VA ratings do not equate to commensurately increased runtime. E.g.: If a 1000VA unit gives you 100 minutes of uptime, a 1500VA unit will not necessarily, probably will not, give you 150 minutes.

The proper way to do it is choose a UPS that's rated at well above your total VA requirement (1.25 to 1.6 times are the common recommendations) and, if you need longer runtime, choose one that lets you add additional battery packs to increase runtime.

There's a downside to more battery, though: Longer recovery time. (Exception was one manufacturer that had separate chargers for each additional battery pack. Very expensive system, though.)

Wish I had offloaded a copy of the config files.........

You have now learned, the hard way, the value of regular backups. Even my network servers that have RAID (and they all have RAID) have nightly unattended backups and the backups are rotated monthly.

In answer to your original question: I've used several brands of UPS' over the years--both in home and business use. I've always ended-up back with APC.

 

[Teken]

Well, for me now this whole conversation is moot.

I had delayed windows updates til today.....system was perfect for this entire month or more.

Windows was prompting me to restart to install the now mandatory updates.

Ok.

Closed BI.....restarted

Windows updated a while then an error saying it had an issue with a device but didn't say which.

And now the system won't boot up.

Tried to roll back updates and it would not.

Trying to restore to a previous config and so far it's not wanting to.

I am being livid right now.

This is as real world as it gets in terms of possible failures . . . As noted early on imagine if you short cycled the system just to test the BIOS was set correctly! You would have thought doing so was the main culprit yet it was a teetering HDD! This is why testing, validation, and consistent follow up of the two must be done for the life of the system. Everything wears down and has a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) which can span years / multi years.

This is why quarterly 30% load testing must be completed on any UPS regardless of the brand, model, size.

Doing so will provide you real world stats and metrics as to the health of the battery packs. Keep in mind every battery has a limited number of cycle life so load testing must balance between obtaining real world stats vs longevity of the batteries.

Good Luck . . .

 

[moparcruiser]

Thanks

Yeah I know better but got lazy.

Drained my cmos by pulling the battery, got into the cmos and the new drive boots up, windows is installed, now doing all the windows updates.

Ugh.

In the old days I had my video edit system on sleds...three or four main drives ready to boot up if I was with a client and the worst happened.

Ilike I said, at home I got lazy.

 

[moparcruiser]

Got her all rebuilt. ALL DAY affair. windows took forever. Tehn I had some Ip issues...luckily I took fair notes.

So all day, a new drive and I am where I was this morning before the crash. Lol. But windows is updated.

I still have to remember how to set up dual streams to save on cpu use....but I'm beat...need to chill.

Will do that tomorrow if I can find my notes on that.

Then back to deciding on a ups. Lol

 

[wittaj]

Glad you got it going!

On the tab where you type in the camera user and password are the pull downs for the substream.

 

[moparcruiser]

Picked up a WD WD5000AURX 500GB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA platter drive on ebay for $16 new sealed......will use that for the backup instant switchover as you folks have recommended.

 

[moparcruiser]

Relative to this whole exploit I have gone thru --- is there a way to save/backup just the configuations for BI in a seperate file on a USB drive or something?

In the main settings panel; there is a "export" button, but when I do that it wants to save a ".reg" file.....

Is that right?

 

[sebastiantombs]

That is the registry entries for BI and can be saved to anything by just setting the path for the save. They can then be imported back into a new install. Another way is to use Blue Iris Tools, developed by Mike, an IPCT guru.

3rd-Party Addons and Tools for Blue Iris

Blue Iris Tools was created to act as a companion to Blue Iris and has a bunch of features built in to help maximize your Blue Iris experience. Weather overlay, Watchdog, DDNS updater, web server & much more. Link...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[moparcruiser]

That is the registry entries for BI and can be saved to anything by just setting the path for the save. They can then be imported back into a new install. Another way is to use Blue Iris Tools, developed by Mike, a IPCT guru.

3rd-Party Addons and Tools for Blue Iris

Blue Iris Tools was created to act as a companion to Blue Iris and has a bunch of features built in to help maximize your Blue Iris experience. Weather overlay, Watchdog, DDNS updater, web server & much more. Link...

ipcamtalk.com

Well, BI makes it easy! Cool!

Thanks much. Now I just have to remember to do it. LOL

 

[c_snyder]

If you look around or know someone who works in an office building with access to "old" equipment you can get some pretty expensive UPS units for dirt cheap. I know of one company that purchases all of their UPS units new and then when battery replacement is due in three or four years they yank the whole unit and replace it with a new one. They're practically new but they dump them for about 1/4 of the original price. Toss in $60 worth of batteries and you're good to go.