Help with choosing decent CCTV ip camera for a budget DIY NAS+NVR

[ASUS-RT-AX82U]

Dell boxes are optimized for the exact configuration maximums.
Look at the max transfer rated for SATA and USB3 - for the variety supported by the box - and look at the rated maximum transfer speed of the drive you select. Most 2.5 drives are 5400 rpm unless you specifically get 7200 rpm. i suspect video recording drives are 5400 since the focus is streaming in/out.

With the Dell MFF having a front USB-C (Gen 2???), wouldn't that give me 10Gb/sec? If so would this be sufficient speed if I bought an external DAS drive such as WD My Book Duo RAID from ebay for £54, which has USB-C connectivity? Would it be enough to use as a combined NAS and a 4 x 5mp Camera CCTV recorder system?

 

[degrub]

USB=C is a form factor. Make sure of the exact technical spec for both boxes.

Spinning rust peaks at about 120-140 MBytes/sec. max transfer rate. So 8x ~ 1 Gbit/sec. 10 Gbit/sec would have plenty of head room. USB3.0 and up is full duplex so no issue there. 4.8 Gbit/sec would probably do, but make sure it is USB3 and not USB2.

video drives may have a different buffering arrangement in the drive cache. Something to check into if you cannot get 2.5 inch video rated drives.

what is your peak recording rate x # cameras going to be ?

if you are monitoring all the cameras on a screen, unless compressed video in/out, then at least double or 2.5 x the peak recording rate. There will be some overhead for compression. You could look at the specs of a commercial security video box for the number and type of cameras to see how this matches up.

 

[ASUS-RT-AX82U]

USB=C is a form factor. Make sure of the exact technical spec for both boxes.

Spinning rust peaks at about 120-140 MBytes/sec. max transfer rate. So 8x ~ 1 Gbit/sec. 10 Gbit/sec would have plenty of head room. USB3.0 and up is full duplex so no issue there. 4.8 Gbit/sec would probably do, but make sure it is USB3 and not USB2.

video drives may have a different buffering arrangement in the drive cache. Something to check into if you cannot get 2.5 inch video rated drives.

what is your peak recording rate x # cameras going to be ?

Unless, the Dell SFF can fit two 3.5" drives, it would be pointless going for the SFF case as 2 x 4tb 2.5" drives would cost me an arm and a leg. Correct me if I'm wrong, but although the MFF lacks internal storage space, it is supposed to a 10gb USB C port and at least 5 x usb 3.0 ports, no????.

If the above is correct, wouldn't I be better off buying the Dell MFF and the WD My Book Duo RAID from ebay for £54 to be connected via usb-c or usb 3.0 port for storage/sharing?

 

[degrub]

Unless, the Dell SFF can fit two 3.5" drives, it would be pointless going for the SFF case as 2 x 4tb 2.5" drives would cost me an arm and a leg. Correct me if I'm wrong, but although the MFF lacks internal storage space, it is supposed to a 10gb USB C port and at least 5 x usb 3.0 ports, no????.

If the above is correct, wouldn't I be better off buying the Dell MFF and the WD My Book Duo RAID from ebay for £54 to be connected via usb-c or usb 3.0 port for storage/sharing?

Only 1 3.5 drive according to Dell in the SFF.

With Dell, usually, you get a faster processor and less thermal throttling due to better cooling setup with the SFF versus the MFF. Check the specs of the systems offered.

The specs i see on the WD box are

https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/external-drives/wd-my-book-duo-usb-3-1-hdd#WDBFBE0040JBK-EESN

which indicates a USB3.2 Gen 1 = 5 Gb/s

 

[ASUS-RT-AX82U]

Only 1 3.5 drive according to Dell in the SFF.

With Dell, usually, you get a faster processor and less thermal throttling due to better cooling setup with the SFF versus the MFF. Check the specs of the systems offered.

The specs i see on the WD box are

https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/external-drives/wd-my-book-duo-usb-3-1-hdd#WDBFBE0040JBK-EESN

which indicates a USB3.2 Gen 1 = 5 Gb/s

The dell I'm getting has a i5-7500t processor which has only 35W TDP, so surely that would be fairly cool to run anyway?

With the WD having and USB3.2 Gen 1 and the Dell having USB 3.0 cause any issues such as throttling or slowing down? Also what about reliability when using an external drive connected via usb?

 

[degrub]

The dell I'm getting has a i5-7500t processor which has only 35W TDP, so surely that would be fairly cool to run anyway?

With the WD having and USB3.2 Gen 1 and the Dell having USB 3.0 cause any issues such as throttling or slowing down? Also what about reliability when using an external drive connected via usb?

depends on how loaded the processor is.
Look at the specs for the MFF versus the SFF cpu in the Dell. Dell had to use a slower processor due to thermals. Lenovo, for the same form factor size uses the processor that Dell uses in the SFF case due to better cooling in the Lenovo MFF box.

Dell lists that model as having USB3.1 Gen 1 = 5 Gbit/s. So they are the same between the two boxes. The drive will be more of the issue than the USB bus on paper.

Operating temperature is what matters for drives. The WD box may offer a way to check the drive temperature. Usually you want them to be less than 45 C and 40 is a better value - and you want the temperature to be constant.

 

[Tech9]

Spinning rust peaks at about 120-140 MBytes/sec. max transfer rate.

WD White, rebranded Hitachi Ultrastar DC HC330 7200rpm goes up to 273MB/sec.

WD My Book Duo RAID

I don't think DIY is the right direction for you. You don't need this box at all to achieve your goals.

 

[degrub]

WD White, rebranded Hitachi Ultrastar DC HC330 7200rpm goes up to 273MB/sec.

nice enterprise drive.

I don't think DIY is the right direction for you. You don't need this box at all to achieve your goals.

 

[Tech9]

nice enterprise drive.

I've got 2x Ultrastar DC HC320 in form of 2x WD EasyStore drives for CAD300 total. Single bare drive was CAD280 at may local computer store. HC320 is 8TB drive, max continuous read speed is 255MB/sec. WD rebranding model number is WD80EDAZ. Data Center drives with 2M MTBF rating.

 

[Tech Junky]

@degrub

I use the WD WD80EZAZ and they push 200MB/s+ as well.

sudo dd if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null bs=4096k iflag=direct status=progress
5628755968 bytes (5.6 GB, 5.2 GiB) copied, 12 s, 469 MB/s^C
1424+0 records in
1423+0 records out
5968494592 bytes (6.0 GB, 5.6 GiB) copied, 12.696 s, 470 MB/s

Raid 10 so total / 2 = 235MB/s

 

[degrub]

yeah, showing my age. Last time i bought spinning rust was about 8+ years ago. Been SSD ever since. Those drives still run though, nary a hiccup.

 

[Tech9]

WD WD80EZAZ

This is rebranded WD WD80EFAX (Red), but with PWDIS enabled and TLER disabled.

Most people don't realize the Green, Red and Purple drives are mechanically identical, but with different default settings in firmware, marketed differently and sold on different price. They are all 5400rpm drives with exactly the same motors, heads and platters. I did data recovery on a few with burned PCBs.

 

[Tech Junky]

That's fine. They were cheap when I bought of them at a time. Better stats / reviews than other junk on the market. Today though they costs a pretty penny.

 

[jerry6]

Thanks @degrub - I actually don't want slower access, so if connecting a DAS to usb means slower access / speeds, then I'd rather avoid it. One option I was thinking of is to somehow pull the SATA cable from the inside to the outside and place a 3.5" hard drive on the outside, but not only would it look very ugly, but it would only be one drive. At this rate, I was better off just going with a ready-built NAS as this is becoming a bit of a mess.

for a DAS I use this has worked for 8 years problem free easy to set up and use I use red pro drives they seem to last and were cheap when I bought them think I have 49 TB of storage
das

 

[jerry6]

Good luck finding equivalent to Windows software for Linux. You've got Tech Junky-ed well. From a simple solution to real headache. I'm out.

It takes time to adapt to linux if you have used windows for a long time , but it is not that bad if you put a bit of effort into it ,software wise it is a royal pain at times

 

[Ripshod]

The windows/Linux change, while being a hurdle, is quite a jump but depending on your needs can be well worth it. It's a learning curve but with so many tutorials on the net, and a little playing time can reap some serious rewards.
I made the leap 2 months ago for a dell N07D based NAS, and set it up from scratch a few times (practice and final) and it does what I intended with no fuss.
Just allow yourself some study time and some practice time and you'll do fine.
I use ubuntu 22.04 lts server on the NAS, and have moved the laptop over to ubuntu as well. I no longer have a single Windows device, and have a 11pro licence gathering dust on my microsoft account.
Give it a serious go. If it doesn't suit go back to Windows.

 

[sfx2000]

I no longer have a single Windows device, and have a 11pro licence gathering dust on my microsoft account.

Comes in handy for gaming - Steam ain't all that unless one has specific HW support

 

[Tech Junky]

server on the NAS

It's handy and stable. Not being locked into a specific variant of the OS allows for bundling several functions into the same box if you want to.

 

[Tech Junky]

Spinning rust peaks at about 120-140 MBytes/sec.

Nah, I have WD 8TB drives hitting 200MB/s+ at 5400rpm. There are some others out here now that hit closer to 300MB/s at 7200rpm and others coming soon that hit 500MB/s+ w/ dual actuators if you can get your hands on them.

 

[Ripshod]

Comes in handy for gaming - Steam ain't all that unless one has specific HW support

I agree that it isn't for serious gamers. I don't game so it never occurred to me. A quick look at the proton database does show that things are catching up. Yes they are still behind even after some years, but the gap does seem to be closing.
Or am I wearing blinkers?