what is making my hard drive take so long deleting videos?
- Thread starter Coldair
- Start date
sebastiantombs
Known around here
sebastiantombs
Known around here
scrolling down and selecting the files from a camera I want to delete while holding the shift key and then right click on that column and selecting delete
sebastiantombs
Known around here
Hmmm. Why are you doing it that way or are these exports? I can tell you that when I installed a new purple for video storage my original intent was to copy the files off the old drive and onto the new one. Even at SATA speeds that would have taken a few days to move 4TB of data. I ende up reformatting the old drive and starting fresh again instead. How big are the files, multi MB or multi GB?
If you're deleting for good, hold down the shift key when you click delete, then select permanently delete, If you don't permanently delete the files, they go into the Recycle Bin which may take longer. Depending on your computer, number of files, phase of the moon, etc. your results may vary.
I have always done it that way, I tried just letting it write over the older files but when I go to view alerts it gets really laggy and slow. I have the recordings set to 2 gb on the big cameras and one gig on the smaller cameras
sebastiantombs
Known around here
I keep everything at one hour for both 2MP and 4MP cameras. That keeps the files sizes just under a GB for a 4MP camera, running 10240 bit rate at 15F/ps. 2MP cameras are in the 500MB range. Once you get past a GB any file operation, moving or deleting, is going to be slow. I've never had any slowness or lagginess playing back the full file or just an alert. I'll speculate fragmentation is the problem, but that is a guess at best.
thanks I will try shrinking the size of the recordings but with the 2 speed domes I usually run them at 25 or 30 fps becuase I really like the sharpness when seeing bears, coyotes or panthers
SouthernYankee
IPCT Contributor
My Standard allocation post.
1) Do not use time (limit clip age)to determine when BI video files are moved or deleted, only use space. Using time wastes disk space.
2) If New and stored are on the same disk drive do not used stored, set the stored size to zero, set the new folder to delete, not move. All it does is waste CPU time and increase the number of disk writes. You can leave the stored folder on the drive just do not use it.
3) Never allocate over 90% of the total disk drive to BI. Leave at least 50GB free.
4) if using continuous recording on the BI camera settings, record tab, set the combine and cut video to 1 hour or 3 GB. Really big files are difficult to transfer.
5) it is recommend to NOT store video on an SSD (the C: drive).
6) Do not run the disk defragmenter on the video storage disk drives.
7) Do not run virus scanners on BI folders
8) an alternate way to allocate space on multiple drives is to assign different cameras to different drives, so there is no file movement between new and stored.
9) Never use an External USB drive for the NEW folder. Never use a network drive for the NEW folder.
10) for performance do not put more than about 10,000 files in a folder, the search and adding files will eat CPU and disk performance. Look at using a sub folder per camera (see &CAM in bi help)
Advanced storage:
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 write, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
Hint:
On the Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage tab, if there is any red on the bars you have a allocation problem. If there is no Green, you have no free space, this is bad.
1) Do not use time (limit clip age)to determine when BI video files are moved or deleted, only use space. Using time wastes disk space.
2) If New and stored are on the same disk drive do not used stored, set the stored size to zero, set the new folder to delete, not move. All it does is waste CPU time and increase the number of disk writes. You can leave the stored folder on the drive just do not use it.
3) Never allocate over 90% of the total disk drive to BI. Leave at least 50GB free.
4) if using continuous recording on the BI camera settings, record tab, set the combine and cut video to 1 hour or 3 GB. Really big files are difficult to transfer.
5) it is recommend to NOT store video on an SSD (the C: drive).
6) Do not run the disk defragmenter on the video storage disk drives.
7) Do not run virus scanners on BI folders
8) an alternate way to allocate space on multiple drives is to assign different cameras to different drives, so there is no file movement between new and stored.
9) Never use an External USB drive for the NEW folder. Never use a network drive for the NEW folder.
10) for performance do not put more than about 10,000 files in a folder, the search and adding files will eat CPU and disk performance. Look at using a sub folder per camera (see &CAM in bi help)
Advanced storage:
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 write, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
Hint:
On the Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage tab, if there is any red on the bars you have a allocation problem. If there is no Green, you have no free space, this is bad.
spammenotinoz
Getting comfortable
Thank-you, updated my cams to use "&CAM\&CAM.%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"
Originally I did have unique sub-folders for them all, but when I moved to all cameras inheriting their record and alert config from a master this broke. Thanks to your post I now have both!!
spammenotinoz
Getting comfortable
Sorry have to stop you right there, I wish to clarify elements.
High fps does not relate to sharpness. In cheap dashcams where you can't control shutter speed, some people attempt to force a faster shutter speed by increasing frame rate to 60fps.
But technically there is no correlation between sharpness and framerate, just a workaround for cheap firmware, but this isn't real in dashcams, but seems to be where this idea arose from. What really happens is if you capture twice the frames, then they believe the firmware will work out it can't use that slower shutter speed and still maintain 60fps. Also more fps, people think you have twice the chance of capturing a good shot of a fast moving number plate.
In your case, to increase "Sharpness" then change the cam from auto and set a faster shutter speed. Faster shutter speeds may require more supplemental lighting, but don't use auto. Cliff-notes explain in more detail.
Secondly, I am going to say "most" not "all" cams will produce sharper and better images at a lower framerate.
Why? Each camera has a maximum bitrate they can achieve. More frames consume more of the bitrate. If there is a lot of activity (ie: more frames per second, or more activity) then the camera will trim detail to remain within the bitrate.
Take the same camera and set to the maximum bitrate setting, in a high activity scene, the level of detail will often be higher with less frame rates.
You may think 30fps looks better on playback, but in real world usage with an NVR\BlueIris the 15fps playback will often appear smoother as it's easier for the system to handle. The bitrate limitations when recording, also extend to playback.
So when you playback a 30fps clip, your again limited to what amount of data will fit within the playback bitrate specified. Double the frames = double the data, so your halving the amount of data available per frame.
The above points ring true for CBR or VBR. CBR will always be using the CONSTANT bitrate, where VBR will peak at the MAXIMUM. But when you have movement\action you will hit the maximum.
3rd point
Most cams from Dahua and Hikvision let you choose higher bitrates than the processor of the camera can really handle (especially at high frame rates). There is some smarts in the firmware that drops some of the higher fps options, but I find when you push the camera to it's limits quality degrades.
Sure some people may disagree, all I can say is try it and see. 15fps is more than enough, even to capture cars driving by and still looks smooth.
Will be honest and say I go over the top with bitrate.
My 4mp cams run H.264H 20mbps (mainly Dahua T5442T-ZE)
My 8mp cams run H.265 at 18mbps. (Mix of Dahua and Hikvision) My Hikvision cameras have a cap of 18mbps, which I find isn't enough to handle H.264H at 4k and maintain all detail.
T5442T-ZE are only is only a 4mp camera, I run them with maximum bitrate, and I often forget it's not 4k. If I increase the frame rate then I notice the quality drop, most noticeable sharpness of number plates reduces.
Flintstone61
Known around here
If you have a lot of cams writing while your deleting, the drive is pretty much getting overworked in a sense. I've had better response times using 2 drives. and leaving a 300-500GB of free space on them.
What processor and how much memory?
What processor and how much memory?
fenderman
Staff member
- Mar 9, 2014
- 36,891
- 21,407
Manually deleting files is ridiculous. The entire point of a VMS is for it to do it for you. You need to figure out the underlying problem. Your database should be on an ssd and you should have a some free space on your recording drive so that it does not fill completely.
Flintstone61
Known around here
sebastiantombs
Known around here
You can also take a look at drive loading in resource monitor or task manager to see what the throughput looks like. I have three drives for video storage supporting 22 cameras and it normally sits around 10MB/ps. It can peak at 15, or a little more, with multiple motion detections but I suspect that's related to DeepStack writing data and jpg files.''
Even SATA can get overloaded at times.
Even SATA can get overloaded at times.
I had a 500 gig SSD for my C drive on this machine but recently upgraded to the m2 2tb drive in hopes of using AI like deep stack. I just built a faster computer but it is running win 11 and I know many here don't recommend using win11. I was thinking about getting a second license for the new machine and copying over my cameras in hopes of getting to use AI and limiting the amount of alerts I scroll through looking for bears, coyotes, panthers and idiots. right now my AO is pretty damn safe but crime is really taking off in our area, with more and more break-ins, car thefts and even some shootings.
anyway I apricate all the help I will start with the recommendations here