SSD for CCTV?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 251651
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Deleted member 251651

Deleted member 251651

Hi guys,

Need some advice..... what are the pros and cons of using an SSD for CCTV DVR?

My current HD in the DVR is noisy and I think its due for a change. I was thinking of using a Samsung 4tb 870 evo ssd, my goal is to make the DVR silent and for multiple users to seek/view past recordings at the same time quicker and easier...... Would the SSD be a better option in terms of performance than to say to go with 4tb WD Purple survailance drive?

CCTV is on 24/7 recording......
 
Tetras said:
I wouldn't myself, the heavy write usage of CCTV is not really suited to SSDs.
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A 4TB 870 EVO has an endurance rating of 2,400 TB. To use that up over say 10 years you would need a bitrate of 63.84 Mbps if it was running 24/7. I don't think endurance would be a concern at all.
 
Eddie99 said:
A 4TB 870 EVO has an endurance rating of 2,400 TB. To use that up over say 10 years you would need a bitrate of 63.84 Mbps if it was running 24/7. I don't think endurance would be a concern at all.
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The OP is saying that multiple people might want to access it at the same time, so it sounds like it is somewhat heavy duty, but it's not just the endurance rating. I don't believe consumer SSDs are a good fit for this task and I'd wager most SSDs that die, die way before they hit their rating. SSDs are great for write once (or write rarely) with mostly read, but CCTV is almost all write, with very little idle time.
 
Tetras said:
The OP is saying that multiple people might want to access it at the same time, so it sounds like it is somewhat heavy duty, but it's not just the endurance rating. I don't believe consumer SSDs are a good fit for this task and I'd wager most SSDs that die, die way before they hit their rating. SSDs are great for write once (or write rarely) with mostly read, but CCTV is almost all write, with very little idle time.
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OP said they want multiple people to seek/view past recordings at the same time which doesn't affect write endurance. At 1080p a normal bitrate would be what, 4 Mbps at most? You'd need more than 16 cameras recording 24/7 for the endurance to be less than 10 years. The endurance rating is usually conservative, it's what they guarantee for the warranty, most SSDs will last for longer than their rated endurance not less. As long as the endurance rating hasn't been used up then general reliability will be much better than any hard drive as there are no moving parts.
 
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I burnt through the health on one of my SSDs like nothing else when using it for an older incarnation of ShadowPlay where it kept a looped buffer on the disc. That kind of usage seems to impact them heavily probably due to the constant nature of it.

End of the day though with a modern SSD you should still get a fair few years from it, but HDDs are still better for the role.
 
Rroff said:
I burnt through the health on one of my SSDs like nothing else when using it for an older incarnation of ShadowPlay where it kept a looped buffer on the disc. That kind of usage seems to impact them heavily probably due to the constant nature of it.

End of the day though with a modern SSD you should still get a fair few years from it, but HDDs are still better for the role.
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What model SSD and capacity was it, and what was your ShadowPlay bitrate? There's a vast difference in endurance between for example a budget 500GB SSD which might have an endurance rating of 150 TBW, compared to a 4TB 870 EVO with an endurance rating of 2,400 TBW.
 
Eddie99 said:
What model SSD and capacity was it, and what was your ShadowPlay bitrate? There's a vast difference in endurance between for example a budget 500GB SSD which might have an endurance rating of 150 TBW, compared to a 4TB 870 EVO with an endurance rating of 2,400 TBW.
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Samsung 840 Evo so older one now with relatively low TBW compared to modern drives, but it wasn't just the writes - the overall SMART parameters relevant to lifespan were dropping far quicker with that usage than normal. I can't remember bitrate now but it was likely somewhere around 40-50mbit/s.
 
Rroff said:
Samsung 840 Evo so older one now with relatively low TBW compared to modern drives, but it wasn't just the writes - the overall SMART parameters relevant to lifespan were dropping far quicker with that usage than normal. I can't remember bitrate now but it was likely somewhere around 40-50mbit/s.
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In that case it's not surprising that it burnt through the health quickly, the endurance rating was probably less than 100 TBW. I believe that specific model was one of the first with TLC NAND and it had an issue with performance degradation, their "fix" was to periodically refresh the SSD by rewriting data which would've affected endurance.
 
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Eddie99 said:
In that case it's not surprising that it burnt through the health quickly, the endurance rating was probably less than 100 TBW. I believe that specific model was one of the first with TLC NAND and it had an issue with performance degradation, their "fix" was to periodically refresh the SSD by rewriting data which would've affected endurance.
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Not just the amount of writes - doing the same number of writes over a longer period didn't have the same impact on the overall SSD health and was within too short a timespan to be related to the periodic refresh. I've seen similar behaviour with other SSDs I use for video editing but not to the same degree.

That particular pattern of use doesn't seem to play nice with the algorithms SSDs use to reduce wear.
 
Rroff said:
Not just the amount of writes - doing the same number of writes over a longer period didn't have the same impact on the overall SSD health and was within too short a timespan to be related to the periodic refresh. I've seen similar behaviour with other SSDs I use for video editing but not to the same degree.

That particular pattern of use doesn't seem to play nice with the algorithms SSDs use to reduce wear.
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I have a 2TB 870 EVO that I use for ShadowPlay recordings at 120 Mbps for 2-4 hours a day, and the SMART values are pretty much what I would expect. You can check the write amplification by comparing the wear leveling count to total host writes, and it's extremely close to my 2TB 860 EVO which is only used for general storage.
 
enterprise ssd is the way to go, can get some that have like 40 drive writes per day.
big issue with using one for camera use is that the drive will always be 100% full and there is no way for effective wear leveling and garbage collection to take place. some ssds may end up slower than mechanical drives under such use cases.
 
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