How many cams can you record to one drive continuous ?

[Tinman]

Recently I installed a 4TB purple drive and started out with 6 cams running continuous recording in BI and had no issues. Then I added 2 more making the total 8 now and it seems to run fine all day but at night I am getting lag and ghosting in ALL of my clips (total of 15 cams) My CPU is running around 30%. Also I might add I was running 4.6.0.2 then I went to 4.6.0.3....same result, I can restart BI and all clears up but eventually my clips get corrupted again. I now have gone back to 4.5.9.11 and will see if this goes away.
I was just curious if maybe I hit my limit on trying to write to one drive ?? Thoughts ?



Support data:
Version: Release 4.5.9.11 x64
OS: Windows 10 Pro
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz [28%]
RAM: 1.70G
Clips: 12253 files, 3.22T/3.24T
Storage: E: +403.0G

 

[bp2008]

What are the cameras?

Try setting their i-frame intervals equal to the frame rates.

Only 8 cameras, regardless of bit rate, should not be coming near the limits of a purple drive, or any hard drive for that matter.

 

[bp2008]

How much total memory does your system have? If it is only 4 GB that might be the problem and you may need to put in 8 GB. Blue iris and CPU consumption as it relates to memory usage Though I doubt this is your problem if your CPU usage remains in the 20s-30s.

 

[Tinman]

What are the cameras?

Try setting their i-frame intervals equal to the frame rates.

Only 8 cameras, regardless of bit rate, should not be coming near the limits of a purple drive, or any hard drive for that matter.

How much total memory does your system have? If it is only 4 GB that might be the problem and you may need to put in 8 GB. Blue iris and CPU consumption as it relates to memory usage Though I doubt this is your problem if your CPU usage remains in the 20s-30s.

All Dahua starlight cams....and have 16GB ram. Currently I run all my cams at 6fps and Iframe is 12. This has happened a few months ago but I then thought it was a router issue and may still be. I will try the 4.5.9.11 and see what happens.

 

[Chris TT]

Change I frame to 6 in camera software if fps is 6

 

[Tinman]

Change I frame to 6 in camera software if fps is 6

I set one of my cams to this and will see if it's clips stay good when the others go bad next time. I doubt this is a Iframe issue as I have used these settings for months with out issues and it is what the Dahua interface defaults to. It always doubles whatever FPS setting you use. Still running smooth on 4.5.9.11, time will tell.
On the camera I set the Iframe to match FPS I really don't notice any changes as far as viewing clips of this cam yet.

 

[DavidDavid]

Is your network able to handle 15 cameras? Max data could require gigabit network. 15 starlights * max of 8gb/s is more than fast ethernet can handle....

 

[Tinman]

Is your network able to handle 15 cameras? Max data could require gigabit network. 15 starlights * max of 8gb/s is more than fast ethernet can handle....

Should be fine there, BI reports around 5200 kB/s 199 MP/s and I do have a gigabit network. Still haven't had a issue since reverting back to 4.5.9.11 I should clarify that I have 8 starlight cams running continuous and the rest are motion detect only.

 

[Tinman]

I do have a couple of ECS cams still running in shop that use media port 34567 and that 4.6.0.3 on has had issues with that port working right....possibly this was my issue ?? So many variables here to deal with

 

[deepwell]

Regarding this topic, Is there an accurate way to tell if I will, (or even if I am) running up against a Hard drive throughput issue? Will there be symptoms? If so, what?

I've been successfully running a BI + 8 cam Hikvision solution on a 8TB Purple Drive. (I have a fast PCIE SSD for the Win10 / BI Database). Continuous, Direct to disk for all cameras, x5 4MP Cams at 12288 Kbps max bit rate, and x3 8MP Cams at 16384 Kbps max bit rate. We are planning to add another x2 4MP and x3 8MP cameras using the same max bit rates. That's a potential ceiling of 184320 Kbps / 1024 = 180 Mbps. The Gb Ethernet should handle that fine, CPU usage is currently ~15%, RAM is < 3GB of 16GB, so my only concern is disk throughput. Will I hit a limit with the Magnetic disk's seek / write times having to write 13 files simultaneously?

If we have (and recognize!) the problem, I'm assuming the solution would just add another purple drive...

 

[looney2ns]

WD says the Purple can handle 64 streams.

 

[cyberwolf_uk]

My WD purple records 12 x 2 meg cameras 24hr per day @10fps without any issues

 

[bp2008]

Regarding this topic, Is there an accurate way to tell if I will, (or even if I am) running up against a Hard drive throughput issue? Will there be symptoms? If so, what?

You could look at Resource Monitor in Windows (Task Manager > Performance > Open Resource Monitor). On the Disk tab you can view the I/O statistics and the Queue Length graph in particular would help indicate if a disk is overwhelmed. If this gets too high (how high exactly, I couldn't tell you) it could indicate the disk can't keep up with the demands on it.

 

[deepwell]

WD says the Purple can handle 64 streams.

Thanks for that stat; it gives me more confidence moving forward!

On the Disk tab you can view the I/O statistics and the Queue Length graph in particular would help indicate if a disk is overwhelmed.

Yep, that's a good idea - at the very least it'll give me a ball park metric. Thanks!