Constant SSD writes SOLVED!!!
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camera_kat - Posts: 16
- Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:31 pm
Constant SSD writes SOLVED!!!
The solution to preventing Sighthound from writing 24/7 to your SSD is having it write 24/7 to a RAMdisk instead. I installed this RAMdisk for windows which sighthound is more than happy to write to. Adjust the settings so temp files wont fill up your RAMdisk, and you are golden. No more constant writes to my SSD.
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Semper Vaporo - Posts: 331
- Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:51 am
Re: Constant SSD writes SOLVED!!!
A good solution, but I have some concerns and then a couple of questions...
One concern is that a power failure would result in a total loss of all data. This could be mitigated with a very good Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) for the system. However the generally available ones for the average consumer do not run for very long. I had one that was advertised as being good for an hour or more and it would not last more than 5 minutes. I recently upgraded that to one that claims 5 to 8 hours. I have had some short (half hour) power outages that it has handled, but I fear the claims are just as exaggerated, so I don't really expect more than an hour or so. I have ONLY the computer tower plugged into it... the display and other extraneous peripherals are not and thus are dead when power goes away; this includes one of my cameras and the powered speakers for audio alerts (the other cameras are all USB powered from the tower), so I can't know what is happening when it is in such a state, but at least it continues to record and I can later review what happened during the power outage. I suppose for long term power protection, one could combine a battery UPS with an alternative energy generator of some sort.
Another concern is the amount of data that can be recorded to a RAM drive. Most PC's have a limit to how much RAM can be installed that is considerably below the maximum that the OS could address if the PC could hold it. I think my present PC has 8 Gbytes and can only hold 16 Gbytes. Writing 100 Gbytes a day means I could only keep a fraction of a day at a time (not even enough to review later in the event of a power outage!). I don't remember presently what the maximum addressable RAM is for the Windows OS, but it would be expensive to fully populate a system to the full OS capability. The reason Solid State Drives are used is because they can be much bigger than what the OS can handle for addressable RAM and they are cheaper due to the difference in the technology used to store the data, such that they have this so-called "limited write life" that RAM does not seem to have.
I wonder though, (before I go out and spend the $$$ for more RAM or a SSD) can you give an idea if there is (or maybe how much,) improvement there is in the operation of SightHound when using an SSD in place of a HDD? And do you see any further improvement when running on a RAM drive? I don't see that using a SSD is going to improve the CPU utilization much and I believe that a RAM drive will just increase the CPU load, but I'd like to hear some empirical evidence about it.
One concern is that a power failure would result in a total loss of all data. This could be mitigated with a very good Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) for the system. However the generally available ones for the average consumer do not run for very long. I had one that was advertised as being good for an hour or more and it would not last more than 5 minutes. I recently upgraded that to one that claims 5 to 8 hours. I have had some short (half hour) power outages that it has handled, but I fear the claims are just as exaggerated, so I don't really expect more than an hour or so. I have ONLY the computer tower plugged into it... the display and other extraneous peripherals are not and thus are dead when power goes away; this includes one of my cameras and the powered speakers for audio alerts (the other cameras are all USB powered from the tower), so I can't know what is happening when it is in such a state, but at least it continues to record and I can later review what happened during the power outage. I suppose for long term power protection, one could combine a battery UPS with an alternative energy generator of some sort.
Another concern is the amount of data that can be recorded to a RAM drive. Most PC's have a limit to how much RAM can be installed that is considerably below the maximum that the OS could address if the PC could hold it. I think my present PC has 8 Gbytes and can only hold 16 Gbytes. Writing 100 Gbytes a day means I could only keep a fraction of a day at a time (not even enough to review later in the event of a power outage!). I don't remember presently what the maximum addressable RAM is for the Windows OS, but it would be expensive to fully populate a system to the full OS capability. The reason Solid State Drives are used is because they can be much bigger than what the OS can handle for addressable RAM and they are cheaper due to the difference in the technology used to store the data, such that they have this so-called "limited write life" that RAM does not seem to have.
I wonder though, (before I go out and spend the $$$ for more RAM or a SSD) can you give an idea if there is (or maybe how much,) improvement there is in the operation of SightHound when using an SSD in place of a HDD? And do you see any further improvement when running on a RAM drive? I don't see that using a SSD is going to improve the CPU utilization much and I believe that a RAM drive will just increase the CPU load, but I'd like to hear some empirical evidence about it.
Semper Vaporo,
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camera_kat - Posts: 16
- Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:31 pm
Re: Constant SSD writes SOLVED!!!
Semper Vaporo wrote:A good solution, but I have some concerns and then a couple of questions...
One concern is that a power failure would result in a total loss of all data.
No, only the temp data goes poof if the power goes poof. All the video that follows a rule gets saved where you want it.
Semper Vaporo wrote:Another concern is the amount of data that can be recorded to a RAM drive. Most PC's have a limit to how much RAM can be installed that is considerably below the maximum that the OS could address if the PC could hold it.
Just about every motherboard shipping today will hold 32 gigs of RAM. And that RAM is pretty cheap.
Semper Vaporo wrote:
I wonder though, (before I go out and spend the $$$ for more RAM or a SSD) can you give an idea if there is (or maybe how much,) improvement there is in the operation of SightHound when using an SSD in place of a HDD? And do you see any further improvement when running on a RAM drive? I don't see that using a SSD is going to improve the CPU utilization much and I believe that a RAM drive will just increase the CPU load, but I'd like to hear some empirical evidence about it.
The RAM drive does not increase the CPU load in a way that could be easily measured, because it is so miniscule. I think it is helpful as it minimizes disk activity that extends the life of both hard disk and SSD.
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evansgo - Posts: 3
- Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2015 3:25 pm
Re: Constant SSD writes SOLVED!!!
I don't think that you are right, but am willing to be corrected..
I've not been using it for long but it looks to me as if the temp storage and the rule storage are in the same place, unless you choose to export it you will loose the lot if you get a power cut and if you do export it then it's not controlled by sighthound so will just grow and grow.
The more I've used Sighthound the more I feel that this is a serious restriction for me, I feel that there should be an option to save the temp folder and the rules folder to two separate places and then the ramdisk could make sense.
I've not been using it for long but it looks to me as if the temp storage and the rule storage are in the same place, unless you choose to export it you will loose the lot if you get a power cut and if you do export it then it's not controlled by sighthound so will just grow and grow.
The more I've used Sighthound the more I feel that this is a serious restriction for me, I feel that there should be an option to save the temp folder and the rules folder to two separate places and then the ramdisk could make sense.