Best way to Pool Drives

[ChiTownTech]

Is there a way to pool drives as one giant storage pool?

For example my old Hikvision NVR had 8 drives and once one drive filled up the video would be stored to the next drive and keep cycling until all drives were filled then it would go back to drive 1 and overwrite the oldest video.

I just transitioned to BI and am having trouble interpreting the settings. Currently I have 1 SSD that houses the OS and the Software and an 8TB drive which is storing video clips. I want to add two additional 16TB hard drives, but I want the storage system to act similar to the Hikvision system so that I get the most retention of ALL video cameras. I am looking for a few months of storage space, most likely 90 days minimum. Essentially I want BI to maximize space and overwrite the OLDEST clips, vs it deleting clips due to age or size. The system is recording continuously.

I attached the current settings. Is there a way to pool drives as one giant storage pool? I dont want to have to split up cameras between drives if possible.

Settings- New.png (96.83 KiB) Viewed 849756 times

Settings - Stored.png (91.94 KiB) Viewed 849756 times

[Thixotropic]

I may be wrong, but I'm not aware of any setting in BI that would allow you to pool drives or connect them as an aggregated virtual drive. I think that's best done at the OS or possibly the controller level.

You can set BI so it moves clips from one drive to another based on a schedule, so you could kinda sorta do the same thing.

I've only got mine moving from an SSD to a NAS periodically so I don't have much experience in setting up a round robin storage system.

Perhaps some of the OGs here can advise you.

[IAmATeaf]

Agree with the above BI has no native way of pooling drives and the reason why some NVRs support it is because they run some form of Linux and make use of this feature that the OS offers.

Windows does also support software pooling and redundancy but personally I don’t recommend it, if you really want that feature then get a proper hardware controller that supports the feature is my view.

I have multiple drives and what I do is get half my cams to write to one and the other half to the other. Make sure you think about the way you split them, so for example I have 2 driveway cams, I get 1 to write to 1 drives the other to the other, this way if a drive should die then you don’t lose all the clips from the driveway.

[MikeBwca]

7/12/2023
Note: As pointed out, I made an embarrassing mistake on the Raid type. I've corrected this post as not to confuse.
Raid 0 - Stripe
Raid 1 - Mirror
Raid 10 - Stripe and mirror - Better option, but twice as pricey.
Raid 3 or 5 - Best option. Less costly than Raid 10.. although the enclosure/card may cost more.
Nas - probably the easiest method.

I'm considering going with a eSata connected external multi bay raid 10 or Nas enclosure.

Now.. on with the message

I have 3 2tb SSD's raided as Raid 0 (Stripping), using Windows Disk Management. Total space of 3 2tb drives available to Windows is 5.45tb. My single 2tb drives are 1.81tb each. So... the same.

There are benefits of this...
- All drives in the Raid shows up as 1 drive in Windows.
- Data is written across each drive in the Raid, block-by-block. This increases write/read access as all drives in the raid are being used at the same time to write/read the data.
- No extra software to install. This is 'Windows Disk Management' already part of Windows. Simple to setup. Note that all drives need to be the same. Best to get all of the same mfg, size, model.

But, as was previously mentioned, in RAID 0 (Stripping), there is no redundancy. But, 95% of Windows users do not have redundancy anyway! Not sure if Raid 10 is available in Windows Disk Management. In my BI, If I loose my BI DB drive, it's no big deal. I export some video to another drive (outside of BI management) for archiving.

Don't be confused with Windows Storage Spaces which can basically do the same thing, plus mirroring. But, this has more overhead and... well... a bit finicky. If your leaning towards this, I would recommend searching and reading up on it and other people experiences. I tried. Didn't like it.

[Brandon_K]

I have 3 2tb SSD's raided as 1 Drive Raid1 (Stripping), using Windows Disk Management. Total space of 3 2tb drives available to Windows is 5.45tb. My single 2tb drives are 1.81tb each. So... the same.

This is RAID0, not RAID1. 1 is a mirror. 0 is a stripe.

But, as was previously mentioned, in RAID (corrected, 0) (Striping), there is no redundancy. But, 95% of Windows users do not have redundancy anyway! Not sure if Raid 10 is available in Windows Disk Management.

While it may be true that most folks don't have redundancy, by involving two (or more) disks in a striped array, your chances of entire array failure goes up exponentially due to failure rates. It's not like running 4 or 5 independent drives.

Yes, Windows can do RAID10.

Storage Spaces is generally a better subsystem. It needs a little more CPU, but you're rewarded with better performance.

[MikeBwca]

Corrected my original post.

[IAmATeaf]

If what’s posted above is true then it’s a I didn’t know me BI could do this from me?

[IAmATeaf]

Just checked, there is no Overwrite when full option and there is no Clips and Archiving settings tab for me just Storage.

I am on an older version of BI so are these options available with the current release?

[TimG]

Latest v5.7.9.0 BI5 here:

Those rather generic sounding options don't seem to exist I hope it's not a spam post. Click on the "Report" button (Looks like an exclamation mark) if you see spam.

[IAmATeaf]

I’m hardly a BI expert but I’m positive that if these options existed or were introduced as a feature update I’d have heard about them which I suppose is why I was a bit surprised that they existed, so surprised that I actually logged onto my BI system to check