BI recording to USB flash

[kwtrading]

Question on recording...

If the pc I'm using has an HDD which I do not intend to upgrade to SSD right now, would I be better off using a USB 3.0 thumb drive to write to instead? I have modest recording needs so a 64 gig drive would be fine. I'm just wondering if it would be more efficient than my HDD spinning all the time. Or would it be spinning anyway since BI is installed on the HDD?

 

[fenderman]

I wouldn't...your hard drive has to spin for the OS and blue iris (unless you have two drives)...the power consumption of a hdd is minimal 3-6w...considering that the flash drive also requires some power, there is not going to be a huge savings there...also note that usb drives are not designed to be constantly written to and erased...finally nothing is more stable than an internal drive...usb can sometimes lose connection..

 

[mbastard924]

The magnetic spinning platters in your hard drive will spin no matter what's installed on your PC. The only time when it's not spinning, is when the computer puts it into energy savings mode - usually by putting the computer into sleep or when the computer is turned off. If this is about extending the life of your magnetic hard drive, I wouldn't worry about it so much. Keep in mind that nothing lasts forever and this includes SSD. You paid for the hard drives, computer, etc... so might as well make full use of them. I usually try to run all my equipment from brand new to the end of its life. If there's something important you'd like to keep, always use a backup system. The other thing you'd have to worry, if you decide to use an external USB 2.0 or 3.0 thumb drive is the read/write speed is not as fast as your internal hard drive. If you're constantly writing huge chunks of video files to your thumb drive, it may have trouble keeping up. In this case, you're probably better off using that same magnetic hard drive to store your recordings or 1) buy another internal SATA hard drive or 2) buy a NAS (such as WD MyCloud) and use that to store your recordings.