MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Hi,
Hoping for some advice from those who are upto speed with their IT skills! I'm having 4 4MP cctv cameras installed later this week and will be using a PC with associated software to store the recordings. Evidently this type of use needs a fairly decent CPU more than anything else and a HDD specified as suitable for constant writing such as a WD Purple.
Ive been looking at the refurbed Dell Optiplex SFF desktops on eBay, are these suitable? Looking at something like an Intel i5 4th Gen CPU.
With regards to the HDD should I buy something like a WD Purple or just use the HDD that comes with the desktop? Not sure whether it's just clever marketing at play or not!
Thanks.
If WD are to be believed there's an advantage to using Purple drives when you've got a couple of dozen cameras, just four cameras not so much. I wouldn't bother personally I don't think.
Bear in mind that many SFF cases may only have one hard disk bay, and an older SFF machine's existing HDD might be on the small side (capacity wise) for holding tons of video data. This might be an issue depending on how long you're planning on holding historic data for.
If you're going to wind up buying a replacement drive anyway I'd want to have the OS and the video data on two separate drives I reckon.
Thanks Cougar, I've got a couple of drives already that I can replace the one that comes with any PC.
Have you got any suggestions on what to look for that could take two drives as I was thinking along the same lines with regards to OS on one drive and data on another too.
Not offhand I'm afraid, I haven't bought a PC outside of work in a decade. The SFF machines I've had through my hands are a nice idea but often a compromise; you wind up with motherboards with a single DIMM socket, proprietary PSUs that are rarer than unicorn semen when you have to replace them, that sort of thing. For your application I'd be reluctant to buy "blind" without knowing exactly what I was getting.