Query regarding overallocation and lost footage despite configured free space

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Sardon
Posts: 114
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2023 10:50 am

Query regarding overallocation and lost footage despite configured free space

Post by Sardon »

I am reaching out for support regarding an unexpected issue I encountered with my Blue Iris storage settings.

Recently, I reconfigured my storage settings and started from scratch to maintain at least 10GB of free space on both 'New' and 'Stored' to avoid any potential overallocation. However, to my surprise, I observed that 'New' had overallocated itself, as evident from the settings > storage screen. This occurrence was quite perplexing, considering the precautions I had taken.

Despite the top bar indicating 3.4GB (should have said 10GB) free, , the 'New' bar beneath it overallocated?
strange_overprovision.jpg
strange_overprovision.jpg (33.17 KiB) Viewed 47 times
Consequently, I regrettably experienced the loss of an entire 2 hours of critical footage, which I intended to use for personal reference. Upon reviewing the 'All Clips' section, I discovered a gap in the recordings from 14:19 to 15:07, with a new full clip starting only from 17:56. While some alerts were captured, the screen playback was corrupted.

I am looking to understand the reasons behind this overallocation. How could this have occurred when the 'NEW' storage seemed adequately provisioned? This footage is crucial, and I cannot afford to lose such data.

Your insights and suggestions on preventing future incidents would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,
SN
IAmATeaf
Posts: 466
Joined: Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:48 pm

Re: Query regarding overallocation and lost footage despite configured free space

Post by IAmATeaf »

I always advocate leaving at least 10% or if you really need the extra space 5% of the total disk space free. Writing to a drive and leaving only 10gb free is a recipe for problems.

In terms of overallocation, if BI is writing to an existing clip file it will continue writing even if it means it over allocates until your cut size or time setting is actioned. By this I mean that if you have your video clip size set to 4gb or 1 hour then BI will continue to write to the current clip until it hits either 4gb or the clip contains 1 hour of video which is why you see it temp over allocated.

Another thing I do is if the drives are all local to the machine then I personally don’t move clips around between drives as this is quite resource intensive. If you can split the cams between the drives logically then this will save moving clips around.
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Sardon
Posts: 114
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2023 10:50 am

Re: Query regarding overallocation and lost footage despite configured free space

Post by Sardon »

Thanks a lot for the advice, IAmATeaf! Looks like I’ve got some tweaking to do with my setup to keep things running smoothly.

Quick question: how do I assign specific cameras to different hard disks? Can’t seem to find that option anywhere in Blue Iris.

Cheers,
SN
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Sardon
Posts: 114
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2023 10:50 am

Re: Query regarding overallocation and lost footage despite configured free space

Post by Sardon »

I've identified the option... I'll observe the outcome. To be fair, if one isn't transferring footage regularly, then a modest amount of free space should be adequate, one would assume. I've designated a specific hard drive for my 4K camera, which ought to accommodate approximately 30 days of recordings, and allocated the other cameras still set to the NEW folder to see the duration it can record. If they end up in semi sync in terms of their duration then happy days.

I've had to utilise my C: drive for my alerts since it's an NVMe drive, which has significantly enhanced the speed with CPAI. All things considered, it's worth the effort to see how this develops, and it certainly presents a practical consideration regarding resource management when frequently transferring data.

Perhaps this could also resolve my freezing glitch issue which I posted on this forum, so I'm willing to try anything at this point. Thanks
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