Dahua SD card recording problems and most reliable sd card?

My client has problems in his Dahua cameras with sd card recording. One HFW4431E-E3 bullet and SD6CE445XA-HNR big PTZ.

Both cameras are set up to record continuously "green" general stream and plus that also motion detection stream triggered by IVS.

In HFW4431E the recording does not work almost at all. It usually starts to record when logging in the web ui, but most of the time the timeline is just empty. Have tried to format the card now and then.

Camera is connected to non-Dahua NVR as ONVIF camera. Is it possible that ONVIF messes internal sd card recording?

In big PTZ the recording works most of the time ok, but seems to be that sometimes, maybe after electric outage, recording stops and then starts again when logged in the web ui.

I wonder if the file system on the sd card is messed after outage and after that recording is unreliable? After sd card format it works ok again. Shouldn't a security device like IP-camera withstand outage easily?

In both cameras there is a Sandisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC 100MB/s Class 10 UHS-I card in.

My final question is: is there an absolute answer what is the card that 100% sure works in these cameras? Dealer has not been able to give me an answer.

I've been having these issues for years. I've tried the most recommended cards, I've tried the most durable "continuous write" capable cards, but they all eventually just stop recording. The cards then cannot be accessed until formatted. I have cards in multiple PTZ's, turrets, and bullet cameras. I hope you find the answer and share it!
Kevin

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I have seen that there is also Dahua branded MicroSD-cards sold by dealer, but with almost 10x price compared - for example - to Sandisk. I wonder if those are any better? Maybe not manufactured by Dahua, but by some other big brand and just branded for Dahua?

In some older cases I have put Kingston 64GB cards but they seem to be quite unreliable. And then on the other hand I have one HFW4431 running now for 3 years with Kingston without any problems.

I've found a new card to try, specifically for surveillance cameras. Although I'm currently using SanDisk cards designed for the same purpose, I've always used WD purple drives in my NVR. maybe their sd cards will perform too. Here's a link so you can read the specs.


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Thanks Kevin, that's good to know. I also personally prefer NVR and very often use WD Purple HDDs, but sometimes clients want to use just camera and sd card or use sd card as redundancy.

Let me know if you try them, and if they perform any better. I usually give them about 6 months use before I make a judgment. Usually that's long enough to have a failure or two. I'm just wondering if the blame is the cards, or could the cameras own read write system be causing the errors? I know I've spent a small fortune on sd cards, trying to find some that don't fail. Could Dahua be focused so much on video performance that they're using a buggy SD interface? I know many of my earlier cameras had horrid audio performance while video was good, and newer cameras had much improved audio sensitivity. I'm curious how much attention and durability testing goes into the SD card interface?

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I have 2 of the 128 WD purple SD cards working for a little over a years now with no problems. Knock on wood.

Kevin Penney said:

I've found a new card to try, specifically for surveillance cameras. Although I'm currently using SanDisk cards designed for the same purpose, I've always used WD purple drives in my NVR.

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I'm wondering if they're just re-branded, I don't think WD makes their own NAND (?). Probably Samsung, Hynix, Sandisk or Micron.

I kinda want to try them too, though.

These cams tend to not work well when continuously recording to SD cards - they should be used for motion only and as a backup to another source. In my experience, once the card is full, the little CPU in the cams have a very difficult time erasing and writing at the same time, thus your continued problems. I can tell when my card is full as the camera gets a little lag when logging into it.

wittaj said:

These cams tend to not work well when continuously recording to SD cards - they should be used for motion only and as a backup to another source. In my experience, once the card is full, the little CPU in the cams have a very difficult time erasing and writing at the same time, thus your continued problems. I can tell when my card is full as the camera gets a little lag when logging into it.

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It is pretty crap. I much prefer an NVR, but we just don't have one yet. Hopefully soon.

Pretty sad. I have 18 dahua, 2 hikvision cams and most I have hell with continuous sd card recording. I have 6 wyze cams that have no sd card issues after 2 years. Given, the data transfer rate is likely much higher with the high resolution dahua cameras, but they should bump up processor power and bandwidth to keep up. Currently using a combination of western digital purple sd cards and Samsung pro high endurance sd cards. So far the western digital cards are working well.

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Have been using now WD Purple 256GB cards for >6months. At the beginning it looked good but now there is issues also with those cards. Gaps in timeline and sometimes recording just stops and card needs to be formatted. After format recording starts again. How a security device can be this unreliable?

oh6hfx said:

Have been using now WD Purple 256GB cards for >6months. At the beginning it looked good but now there is issues also with those cards. Gaps in timeline and sometimes recording just stops and card needs to be formatted. After format recording starts again. How a security device can be this unreliable?

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Are you running continuous recording or triggered?

What are other settings on the camera? Are you running many parameters at the rated spec of the camera? If so that can cause problems.

Keep in mind that these type of cameras, although are spec'd and capable of these various parameters, real world testing by many of us shows if you try to run these cameras at higher fps and higher bitrates than needed that you will max out the CPU in the camera and then the camera bugs out just long enough that you miss something or video is choppy. My car is rated for 6,000RPM redline, but I am not gonna run it in 3rd gear on the highway at 6,000RPM...same with these types of cameras - gotta keep them under rated capacity. Some may do better than others, but trying to use the rated "spec" of every option available is usually not going to work well, either with a car or a camera.

Look at all the threads where people came here with a jitter in the video or IVS missing motion or the SD card goes wonky and they were running 30FPS and when people tell them to drop the FPS and they dropped the FPS to 15FPS or used fewer IVS and the camera became stable. As always, YMMV...

Movies on the big screen are shot at 24FPS, I do not think we need 30FPS for our mobile devices and tablets LOL. Shutter speed to capture details is much more important than FPS.

15 FPS is sufficient for surveillance cameras. Generally one IVS intrusion box works as well. Occasionally a field of view may require another one or two, but just because the camera is capable of 12 IVS rules doesn't mean to do it. And I have a few cameras running more than one IVS just fine...you just cannot get carried away.

These little CPUs sometimes seem to struggle when the SD Card gets full and cannot figure out what to overwrite. I suggest setting up a schedule in the camera to delete files older than X days (sometime within how long it takes for your card to fill). That fixed my issue.

Wittaj, thanks for your thoughts. My client is using continuous recording and 1 or 2 IVS rule to trigger motion recording. Over 10 Dahua cameras and all suffer more or less of SD card recording. Encode settings vary, but surely they are at least 20-25fps in all cameras. He likes to have smooth video. I think camera should withstand recording to sd card when rated moderately like that, also taking in account that for example SD6CE445XA has also these problems and it is >1500€ camera.

I will check with him the auto-delete setting...

oh6hfx said:

Wittaj, thanks for your thoughts. My client is using continuous recording and 1 or 2 IVS rule to trigger motion recording. Over 10 Dahua cameras and all suffer more or less of SD card recording. Encode settings vary, but surely they are at least 20-25fps in all cameras. He likes to have smooth video. I think camera should withstand recording to sd card when rated moderately like that, also taking in account that for example SD6CE445XA has also these problems and it is >1500€ camera.

I will check with him the auto-delete setting...

Click to expand...

Unfortunately many of us have seen issues with the continuous recording in the Dahua cams, so I suspect that is the issue.

Samsung Evo Plus cards work very well. I have had one recording continuously now for 4+ yrs in a Dahua PTZ,
I use only the Evo Plus cards, and not had any problems with SD card recording in any of my cameras.
You also need to be SURE you are getting legit cards, there are many counterfeit cards in the market.
Test any new card with the attached file.
See this as well. SD Memory Card Formatter | SD Association