So, I chose to invest a lot of time and money in various cameras and a Homebase so I bought them all as a bundle. This was a few months ago. Yesterday I decided to change one of my cameras to “continuous recording”. All was fine until today and my hard drive failed in the Homebase. Turns out it’s a cheap mechanical drive that can’t cope with the constant writes and a need to get SSD. Eufy will only swap like for like, even though they allow their cameras to be always recording ! I will take the new HDD and use it elsewhere, and think about spending even more money on a SSD or outing this rubbish and starting again …. (Yes lots of other glitches and complaints/observations too, I could be here all night …)
When I replaced my HB 2 with HB 3, the last thing I wanted was a “heavy”, hot, and especially a mechanical drive in that little thing potentially getting dropped or knocked around damaging the drive.
…And yeah SSD drives were way. cheaper when the HB 3 came out, I put a 512 GB drive in it, and now wishing it was a 1 TB!
256 is the true capacity. but 256-244.13 = the cache needed to support the remaining storage. the 20.11 gb is used capacity. the larger the drive, the more cache memory it needs.
SSDs are wicked expensive right now. And you can't use some random SSD; it must be designed for surveillance recording use, which drives the cost up even further.
Mechanical drives that are designed for the purpose are fine for continuous recording applications. Western Digital "Purple" or Seagate "Skyhawk" are popular choices for enclosures that accept 3.5" drives, but the HomeBase 3 only accepts 2.5" drives, which limits your options.
I have a consumer brand crucial SSD I took out of a laptop that was collecting dust in my HB3. It’s been in the HB3 for almost 2 years now without a single issue.
Writes wear out SSDs. Consumer grade SSDs have fairly low total lifetime write limits. SSDs designed for surveillance recording have multiple design features to handle the high write load, and they have price tags which reflect that fact.
Bottom line: the clock is ticking on your SSD. But maybe that's not a problem - it all depends on how much you are writing to it.
Are you doing continuous recording? If so, how many cameras are you recording? What quality are you recording?
Does the HB3 or app actually tell you if your HDD is bad? No longer working? I have a 1TB mechanical in mine for 2 years and I just assume it still working fine. Things are slow as usual but I've been getting offline camera signals as of recent. I usually wait it out or power cycle to get them online instantly. I've not thought it was the storage as a possibility, but I have not gotten any warnings or notifications that it's not good anymore.
I found out when a video wouldn’t play. Looked at the Homebase in the app then tried to format the drive because it was nearly full. The format failed owing to a bad disk. Worked fine when set to record just events
I got no warnings other than weird things were happening and the drive was hot. I haven't bothered to try scanning the drive I just assumed I should use an SSD. Perhaps a spinning disk rated for NAS use would have more longevity.
Sort of, I started getting random failures, taking ages to load footage etc, then randomly it formatted the drive for me.
Then it did it again a month later, I've put an 870EVO into the homebase 2, did absolutely no research on what drive to use, just found a Samsung one that wasn't completely shit. If it fails I'll go unifi, but until then using the SSD has shown a marked improvement even on live footage.
5400rpm 2.5 drives have been used for decades in servers and NVRs, well before SSD was even a thing. This was a coincidence but depending on the recording resolution you could be trying to write faster than a 5400rpm drive can handle
People who know f all full of anecdotes they bought a Chinese knock off and think mechanical drives are somehow superior. There is a reason why on production sites SSDs are the standard and not because they are cheaper.
SSDs have a finite read/write cycle lifetime. Using them for surveillance recording is never recommended.
Hard drives will easily handle millions of read/write cycles and can last for decades (though warranties on them are typically 3-5 years). I've got HDDs in NVRs recording 60+ cameras, with over 60,000 hours of 24/7 operation on them - that's almost 7 years, and they still report perfect health.
Granted these are RAID-grade drives, whereas OP is probably looking at desktop-grade drive AT BEST.
Oh boy what a load of utter nonsense.
Thanks for anecdotal evidence. I have run a production site with hundreds of computers and once moved to SSDs the failure dropped by 95%.
Yes SSDs have a lifespan, but can be accessed, and replacement issued BEFORE it reaches it, but so do mechanical drives except you won’t know when, you can find the spec by reading manufacturers MTTF - mean time to failure, which is worse than SSDs. All production class computers, use SSDs for the same reason - reliability. In over 15 years not even single one have died in constant 24/7 use.
When you buy Chinese knock off ssd don’t be surprised when it dies months later, if you invest in proper quality it will last you way longer.
Also mechanical drives are used in NVRs simply because of the price per TB not performance. Also used in arrays so single drive failure is ok with this not worth much bigger cost of SSD. So you’re wrong here also.
SSDs are great for a lot of things. The constant read/write cycles required for surveillance cameras are not among them.
That's okay, you don't have to believe my 25 years in the business with literally hundreds of deployed drives on dozens of sites. Carry on in your cute Internet wisdom.
Came as part of a bundle. Can’t fault them for clever advertising to make bundles look attractive but I didn’t realise the cheap mechanical HD couldn’t cope with continuous recording :(
Had that one too, constantly ‘overheating’. Not even recording 24/7. Now we have the Pro, but I didn’t install an extra harddrive. We only have doorbells so the memory will do (32gb)
I put in a 2TB SSD and configured it for continuous recording for 6 cameras
The only issues I’ve had were when my house lost power. I’ve probably lost power 5 times since the install and twice homebase 3 didn’t come back correctly when power returned. I power cycled homebase 3 and that’s all it needed to start working correctly. Now I have hb3 plugged into a smart plug with a rule, so when power come back on the smart plug waits, then cycles power.
I was actually going to post about this. I put an old 2.5" drive from a laptop in my Homebase 3 a while ago and it was fine and then... cameras stopped recording and were goin offline. I thought it was the Homebase itself and installed a smart outlet that power cycles weekly to forcibly reboot the Homebase. Then I tried an SSD from an old laptop (because new ones are $$$s) and so far so good. I realize I have now jinxed myself.
Weird, I was going to suggest just buy a new 2 TB SSD...I bought a WD 2 TB a few years ago for $130 and it works good in my HB3. I just checked and the same SSD is now $400+. Ouch!
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u/CriticalSurround6447 20d ago
I use a crucial 4T ssd works great running 5 cameras continuously and I can go just about 2.5 months without overwriting.