The Perfect BI setup needs SSD ?

fenderman

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Yeah, the point would be to keep the two Purple drives as they are for recording the bulk footage (I record 24/7), but set up the Seagate HDD in place of the Samsung SSD. Win 10 isn't a problem but I see there are some limitations on the demo version of BI that might, but I'm not sure, skew the results. The results of such a test aren't important enough to me to merit another BI license.



This is a point I've addressed a couple of times but it seems to get lost in all the noise. There is ZERO doubt a SSD performs better in pretty much all regards, except maybe lifespan, than a HDD. There has never been any dissention about this point in general. It's not about the cost, none of that.

The only bone of contention is how all that adds up or doesn't in the big picture. It's easy to cite 30 seconds savings on boot up or whatever, or a couple seconds on this task or that task, but if I only boot the computer or perform the tasks once in 6 months to me this is nothing. Clearly others see it differently and or use their BI systems differently.
Its not about the time savings. Its about the usability. Only a complete fool would not add an SSD for 20 bux. Furthermore the title of this thread is a "perfect BI system". Telling someone not to install an SSD is bad advice. Sad part is you keep giving this bad advice despite never experiencing the difference.
 

Whoaru99

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Its not about the time savings. Its about the usability. Only a complete fool would not add an SSD for 20 bux. Furthermore the title of this thread is a "perfect BI system". Telling someone not to install an SSD is bad advice.
I've not told anyone what to do, I've simply expressed my opinion that I think the most often cited merits of SSD are not terribly important in a BI machine. But, I do acknowledge that can vary a lot depending what one does with their BI machine.

The OP questioned the merits of SSD in the body of the opening post so it seemed to me entertaining that point wasn't terribly off-topic.
 

fenderman

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I've not told anyone what to do, I've simply expressed my opinion that I think the most often cited merits of SSD are not terribly important in a BI machine. But, I do acknowledge that can vary a lot depending what one does with their BI machine.

The OP questioned the merits of SSD in the body of the opening post so I it seemed to me that my perspective wasn't terribly off-topic. My apology if I read it wrong.
You are wrong! As expressed by many users here who have actually experienced the difference. You perspective is foolish and wrong. Its not even up for debate. The difference is significant regardless of what you do with you BI machine.
 

J Sigmo

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A month or so ago, I bought three SSDs, largely on the recommendation of @fenderman. I've been busy with a lot of stuff, but put the first one in an old, sluggish laptop. I wasn't sure it would matter because this is an old, slow machine, anyhow. But Wow! It made a huge difference in boot up speed and other tasks on that ancient laptop!

Next, I put one in a new PC that I use mostly for Photoshop. The difference is excellent, and most appreciated! Talk about boot fast, and load up PS (which is a pig, that launches really slowly!) fast! I haven't gotten to test it with converting video to frames or editing video, or converting RAW files, but I'm looking forward to trying all of that.

I still haven't upgraded my BI machine, but reading this thread has encouraged me to get off my butt and install that one now. I'll bet it will improve the lag when calling up the alerts, etc., and that would make the upgrade worthwhile.
 

CCTVCam

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There is ZERO doubt a SSD performs better in pretty much all regards, except maybe lifespan, than a HDD. There has never been any dissention about this point in general.
Stop listening to anti SSD propaganda and start listening to real world experience. A quality SSD has no lifespan issues.

Below is the SMART Data for my 6 year old Samsung SSD.

Note total number of Logical Blocks Addressed:

4 Billion!!!!

Now compare Errors to threshold. Apart from a few times when it's go a little warm in summer, (so ignoring air temp values), you'll find the worst value from 100 to 0 with 0 being the failure point, is 99!! So a 1 point drop compared to a perfect new drive and most values are still at a perfect 100 out of 100.

 

Whoaru99

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Your single point example is statistically insignificant in a reliability/durability comparison.

In reality, the cumulative experience of all IP CAM talk members probably would still be statistically insignificant with respect to the entire park of SSDs and HDDs.
 

fenderman

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Your single point example is statistically insignificant in a reliability/durability comparison.
I have been using SSD's in hundreds of machines since they first camera out, blue iris and otherwise. Most of the originals are still in operation. I have NEVER seen a failure. SSD's do not have a higher failure rate than spinners. In fact since there are no moving parts they likely have lower failure rates. You have zero data to back up your false claims.
 

Whoaru99

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That is great for you, but still insignificant in the big picture.

Perhaps you have some real data to back your position you'd care to share?
 

fenderman

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That is great for you, but still insignificant in the big picture.

Perhaps you have some real data to back your position you'd care to share?
So you have no data, zero, yet you make a bold claim. Yet you are asking me for data? really? Stop making crap up.
Here is a snippet "SSDs can be expected to last as long or longer than HDDs in most general applications."
Are Solid State Drives / SSDs More Reliable Than HDDs?
Backblaze knows a thing or two about hard drive reliability. The bottom line is your claim that they ssd's have a higher failure rate is false and baseless. Its seems you have little to no experience with SSD's.
 

CCTVCam

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I can back fenderman up on this.

I've lost count of how many Hard Drives I've returned over the years and I've always bought top quality ones, WD being my favourte and by far the best performing and reliable brand in my opinion. That said, I've sent back 2 x Raptors and at least 4 or 5 other WD Black or equivalent drives.

Out of the 2 SSD's I've had for 6 years, I've had 0 failures or returns. Yes I may be statistically insignificant but an SSD is a very tough device with no moving parts as Fenderman says.

You base your theory on the fact that memory has a limited number of possible writes before it dies. However, consider this. How many times have you had a stick of system memory fail? Same stuff. In 30 yrs of building my own pc's and running Memtest 64 when I have an issue, I've Never had a single stick of memory return an error.

Now consider than unless you have a high end gaming PC, the amount of system memory is most likely going to be 8GB. Compared to a 256GB SSD, it's going to get written to 32 times as often (256/8) taking into account capacity alone. Now consider that an SSD for a PC OS or programs is going to have very few writes, whilst for system memory, EVERY single thing you do on the pc, every program, every time you start the pc and start one is written into the system memory. That probably means system memory gets written to hundreds of thousands of times more frequently that an SSD. Lets be ridiculously conservative here and say the difference in written data is only 10,000 times. When comparing 8GB of memory to a 256GB SSD, the relative number of blocks of data written are going to be 10,000 x 32 = 320,000 times more often for the system memory than the SSD, and that figure is probably out and under estimates by a factor of 10 or 100, taking the actual figure more likely into the tens of millions of times more write frequency for an 8GB system memory stick than an SSD holding an OS.

So, all that said, how many times have you had system memory fail? I'm guessing probably never. Yet you're worried about an SSD that uses memory that's more robust (as many now are 3D structured for more wear protection), and has 320,000 less write frequency than your memory on my very low estimate above, and tens of millions less write frequency wearing the memory blocks based on the fact that my estimate is most likely a gross under estimate.

It begins to show, just how ridiculous the whole SSD's are going to wear out theory is. Yes put them as a write drive in a data centre, then maybe. But in ordinary circumstances, by all rights, your system memory should wear out far faster.

just my 2 cents.
 

IAmATeaf

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You can’t really compare DRAM to SSDs in my view, completely different technologies, one preserves the data the other resets when power is removed.
 

IAmATeaf

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Just to add and these are my views, I would never ever consider another machine which doesn't have the OS on an SSD, full stop.

I work in IT, boring :) and have various machines and am always striving to replace a slower hard disk with something quicker. My server currently has 8 500Gb 7.2k hard disks and 8 320Gb SAS 10k drives and I'm always scanning Ebay to see if I can pick up some 15k SAS disks. Granted my server has a differing use but as I pointed out above in a computer the hard disk(s) are the slowest elements by factors of 100s if looking at mechanical drives that anything you can do to speed them will give a very significant and visible improvement.

@Whoaru99 give it a test and if you are happy then that is what matters at the end of the day :)
 

Dasstrum

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I'd like to add my .02 in on this too. I personally purchase computers that have a "pre installed" hard drive loaded with Windows 10. These computers are usually ebay "refurbished" HP Compaq SSF PC's.

I replace the spinner drive with a Sandisk 120GB SSD that cost $20 and use a 2.5 to 3.5mm adapter that cost $6.50 for 2 of them.
https://amzn.to/2Fb5cvB (120GB SSD)
https://amzn.to/2W64jeH (2.5 to 3.5 adapter)

I then copy the spinner drive OS to the SSD using AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition (Free).

I then load up the computer with a Western Digital Purple drive and save everything to it. Typically a 2TB drive for $70
https://amzn.to/2OfvyAU (WD Purple 2TB)

Now why do I choose to use a SSD for a main drive: Reliability. I have had spinner drives fail on me after just a year out of the blue - I've also had clients knock over the computer which ends up destroying the spinner drive. Not a good option for me as a main drive. I've not had a SSD yet fail on me in 6+ years of using them (knock on wood)

I still however use spinner drives for my video storage mainly because of cost. 2TB SSD's cost like $300 while 2TB WD Purple cost $70.
 
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Legsmaniac

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I totally agree with all, the use of an SSD in just about everything including a BI server machine is a must! They are so cheap now and last so much longer it's silly not to. The only thing I have that still uses a spinner at the moment is my Humax PVR but not for much longer! There are (or were) so many posts on many AV forums NOT recommending the use of SSDs in PVRs due to lifespan but given how much better they are now and so cheap, I'm gonna ignore the lot of them and change mine anyway. If nothing else, I'll certainly gain a quieter PVR cuz there's nothing more annoying than the faint sound of the spinner going 24/7 in my machine. Not so faint sometimes. Then and only then will i have everything using digital solid state storage. No more mechanical platters in my house!
 
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I should find my oldest 60GB and hook it up to get the statistics, I'm pretty sure it was over 9 years of Power On time.

But the one I installed in my BI system with complete confidence is 6.5 years of "Power On Time", has been through 360 power cycles (most were before I installed them in this machine because it was an old game disk), 1.75TB written, 20.7TB read on a 120GB SSD (Corsair CSSD-F120GB2), and still shows 100% remaining lifetime (I guess because of the low write rate of 15-times capacity, since quality SSD's should reach about 10,000 writes per cell). Unfortunately, I'm not turning the data over very fast on this drive, because I have surveillance drives where most the video is stored directly. I put alerts on it and log temperatures from sensors all around the house every minute to a database on that drive, but after several weeks its still only the initial size of 8MB so going to be awhile.

But Backblaze has a write-up here: SSD 101: How Reliable are SSDs?
 

marzian

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I know this is an old thread but:

Is there a point to record to an SSD and archive to an HDD? As opposed to directly recording the HDD.
 
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Is there a point to record to an SSD and archive to an HDD? As opposed to directly recording the HDD.
Nope. Record video streams directly to HDD folders and avoid moving files (i.e. dont record and then move, just record then delete video files after storage limits reached) is the recommended approach.

SSD would be used for Blue Iris internal database and OS as part of an optimization (SSD being faster than HDD for some activities).
 

malkazoid

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First post here... just preparing to get set up with my first ipcam system.
I'm also preparing to set things up to be independent from the power grid with solar, so energy efficiency has become a real focus.
For a machine that is on 24/7, year in year out, an SSD presents some advantages beyond the obvious speed boosts.

In terms of storage drives, there are currently 4tb ssd drives available for a little over 100 bucks. Are there any reasons not to use ssd(s) for storage as well, with Blue Iris?
 

SouthernYankee

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Internal 4TB SSD are over $400 US. (5/8/2021) . If they are cheaper then that I would test them to verify that they are really 4TB.

Use H2TESTW program to test before use, This is an old slow program but very concise, if it reports any error then the SSD is junk.
 
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