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Recommendation for external storage

SottoSotto
edited June 2021 in SecuritySpy
Hi,

I am looking for external storage to be used for SS (the calculator says I need ca. 10 TB) - so I would like to go with 16TB.
As I have understood NAS is not such a good solution for SS, instead what RAID system can you recommend for TB3 or USB 3.0/3.1 to connect to a Macmini i5 2018 (with Big Sur)?

Thanks.

Br
Sotto

Comments

  • JeffAlvesJeffAlves
    Not sure why you would thing a NAS isn't a good solution for SS. I've been using SS and my Synology NAS for 3+ years with no difficulty.
  • Senna_F1Senna_F1
    Jeff, Ben recommends DAS over NAS basically. But that also doesn't mean that you need RAID Sotto. How are you going to implement RAID, and which level? Personally, I ditched my Synology NAS and switched to a Mac mini with USB drives. it's the cheapest and very reliable as there is no RAID software to worry about. I then use Carbon Copy Cloner to make backups of everything. Personally, I use an external SSD for SS, and then have that backed up to one of the external USB drives.
  • SottoSotto
    Yes, indeed Ben is not recommending NAS. As far as I understood due to the not automated connection after a reboot of the mac. I would like to go with a NAS (synology) but this possible issue hinders me to do so, didn’t want to go this manually way as I am rebooting my mac daily automatically
  • BenBen
    Many users do have NAS setups, and they can work well, but with a NAS there is just more to go wrong (more failure modes) than a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) solution, so it is always going to be inherently less reliable (often only marginally less reliable, but when you are running the system 24/7 for years then this difference becomes significant). Therefore I would always recommend DAS over NAS unless there is a particular reason to use NAS.

    The other question is whether to use RAID vs. a single drive. In general, there are three useful features that can be provided by RAID: speed, redundancy, and the ability to create one large volume that would otherwise be impossible with a single drive.

    Unless you're recording continuously from many high-resolution cameras, then standard single HDD drives provide enough speed. So in this case, RAID is most useful for the purposes of redundancy or to easily achieve large amounts of storage (although as @Senna_F1 describes above, a backup is also a good solution in lieu of true redundancy).

    So, @Sotto - a single 16TB external USB 3.0 / USB 3.1 / Thunderbolt drive could be a good solution (again, assuming the capture data rates aren't huge). Alternatively, a RAID-5 setup with 3x 8TB drives would give you 16TB storage and 1-drive redundancy (at higher cost of course).
  • SottoSotto
    @Ben

    how much data does SS generate from a 1080p camera in 20fps and h265 generates ?
    I do have a 14TB WD Red Pro (which according to BlackMagic has a write speed round about 250MB/s) How many cameras would the hd write speed be sufficient for?
  • BenBen
    Depending on the encoding quality setting, and the amount of activity that is happening in front of the camera, you should expect to see a data rate of around 100-300 KB/s for such a stream. If the drive has a write speed of 250 MB/s, you could, in theory, write ~1000 of these streams simultaneously.

    However that write speed sounds anomalously high for an HDD. It's better to use our File Writing Test app, as this simulates the kind of writing that SecuritySpy has to do (frequent small chunks of data to multiple files simultaneously).
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