New Mac Mini Purchase Deliberations and Where to Store Motion Recordings

ConvenInteg
ConvenInteg
edited May 2016 in SecuritySpy
Greetings, all. I'm certain this question has been already answered succinctly by Ben (Jedi Master Kenobi) but I failed to find it in a search here. A client (with five to seven cameras or so) is asking for advice on a new Mac Mini purchase for dedicated SecuritySpy duties. The Mac Mini will have an SSD drive. As I consider sizing the drive, I wonder what luck folks have had saving and interacting with SS files to external USB 3 and Thunderbolt 2 drives. Please share specific recommendations or experiences. Thank you.

Comments

  • Ben
    Ben
    Our in-house system uses an external USB 3 drive and this works well. Basically anything USB 2 or faster has plenty of speed to record video streams from about a dozen cameras in normal conditions (motion detection, 10fps or so, H.264 compression). So you're better of getting a modest internal SSD for the system software, and a large external HDD for the captured files, as this will give you loads of storage at a reasonable cost.

    Hope this helps. May the force be with you!
  • ConvenInteg
    ConvenInteg
    Great news, thanks for the tip, Ben!
  • DaveGarratt
    DaveGarratt
    I have the same config with the Mac Mini storing its recordings to it's own SSD drive. However as the Mac mini is in an office and in theory could be stolen I have recently changed it. I now have a raspberry pi attached to a 2TB usb drive acting as a server. The pi is a good chouce for me as I can put it in a locked cupboard and I don't have to worry about the build up of heat that I would invariably get if I put the Mac Mini in there. I am now experimenting with using the camera's built in motion recording events to write data to the pi directly and using SS to just view the cameras either on a PC or iPhone. By removing the motion detection from SS I think it should reduce the CPU load as well.

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