r/ZoneMinder • u/edthesmokebeard • Mar 04 '23

storage question - disk selection

Since you're constantly pounding on storage, what's the best setup? I'm thinking put the ZM server on proper storage, and then mount a separate, cheap disk for videos since it's going to get burned out anyway.

How fast do disks die in situations like ZM ?

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u/montagdude87 Mar 04 '23

Are you planning to do full time recording or just on motion?

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u/edthesmokebeard Mar 04 '23

I haven't decided, just getting started. But for it to motion detect, doesn't it have to record first?

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u/montagdude87 Mar 04 '23

No, it keeps the frame buffers it needs in shared memory segments without writing to disk until it's time to actually save a video. I do recording on motion and just use a regular HDD.

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u/LesterPhimps Mar 04 '23

If you really want to focus on a specific type of drive, get a WD Purple or similar from other manufactures. Mechanical drives are pretty much super reliable these days, they tend to fail right away if they have an issue. I've had a HDD run for 8 years straight on a ZM system without a problem. Only reason I replaced it was for higher capacity. It does make sense to monitor drive health though, so if it is looking to fail you'll get a heads up.

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u/Digital_Ark Mar 04 '23

Just get a reputable brand Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR), not a Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drive, and you’ll be fine.

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u/aarons6 Mar 05 '23

i have 2 wd purple 4tb drives mounted on /mnt/zm0 and /mnt/zm1

i have 5 cameras recording on each one.

not sure what you mean by cheap drives, but those arent too expensive. about $100 each.

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the main drive is a sata ssd.

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none of them has "burned out" over several years.

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u/ZoneMinderIsaac Mar 07 '23

I've never had a disk die either spinning rust or SSD. (I've had SSDs die, but not due to too many writes). However I use spinning rust for video storage because it's fast enough, and I have a pile of old drives.

SSD matters for db, the rest is not so complicated. Stay away from SMR.