tweak'e

i see that segate is 52MBs sustained read which is proberly far to slow. my spare drive is around 60MB/s (or so they say). if the hardrives are dropping from atat100 to ata66 and the data requirment is well over what ata66 can dielever then it could end up with those sorts of problems. have you tried the lower quality options? less data may mean less problems, more bandwidth for data to be resent.

what would the data rate be to a hardrive from the DVR? 4 analog cameras, D1 res, 50fps(overall), best quality, mpeg4. just wondering what minimum speed hardrive would be required. i was just trying an old spare hardrive and it was loosing 7-8 seconds of footage every 5 minutes like the hardrive just wasn't quite fast enough.

been having a few problems with my DVR. it seams to randomly stop recording, gets cameras mixed up, times mixed up, some video is missing, some is mixed in with video of another day. whats going on with this thing? changed hardrive to spare one but that seams to be doing the same. old hardrive tests out fine.

both been using manufactures program but i find a third party freeware one is much easier to understand. how to delete data is the problem. i doubt they would release info on how to so people don't wipe bad drives and on sell them. tho many years ago i had instructions on how to access hidden sector of hardrive which fixed a booting problem (a right pain having to type machine code). no doubt there is probably something built to do the job hidden on the dark side.

i've been checking up on the SMART data on the drive. the drive has had a fair bit of "Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate" errors. tho its fine in the pc. i suspect the cause of those errors is the cradle loosing contact due to impacts. either that or the poorly done IDE cable (solid cable, not split to allow it to flex) it has is pulling apart loosing contact. it could well be once the drive has logged enough errors it starts falling back to lower ata standard. to test it you would have to find a way to delete the smart data and reuse it and see if it still faults.

what hardrives have you used? just having a closer look at the specs (WD). couple of things i noticed, theres quiet a difference in power, weight, max temps etc. i don't know what the power limits of the recorder are. might be pushing the 12v or 5v line a bit to much. HD drives do funny things when feed low power. the weight could be a factor tho as that will influence how well the cradle is dampened. one small thing i will try out in the next few days.......the cradle is held in place on the sides by a few soft 'fingers'. normally thats just to keep it centred as it sits hard on the bottom. however with the unit on its side the cradle rests on them and they tend to give. i noticed the cradle rocked and slammed into the case. so i bend the bottom fingers out of the way and used the top ones to hold it down in place. obviously the connector dosn't like being at an angle but it lined up once i backed off all the screws on the connector block and cradle and re-tightened. i'm hoping the cradle will now stay firm in the unit and let the rubber mounts do their job. fingers crossed it helps. just looking into getting an AV drive. also my old DVR i had mounted with inch thick foam rubber pads. i'll see if i can do that again and try to cut down some of the vibration. it may just be a vibration problem rather than a shock problem.

thanks for that. looks like the same issue then. the problem here is i have absolutely no where to fit it flat. my old chiense mjpeg did fine. just used to loose a frame now and then on big bumps. 12 months no problems with drive and the old drive was used in the new one which was fine for quite some time. this new one tends to loose large amounts of footage and its not just doing it on bumps. you can bash it by hand without a problem. i have modified mounts. i will have to improve them some more. bit tricky as this unit is different sized to my old one. the pics i put up, one has no bumps on the road, the other is with vehicle stationary. only other thing i could thing of is the tray moving causing bad contact.

did some more checking and i think i found a possible poor earth on the main power feed. so added an earth to the body. did a bit of testing. it hasn't fully dropped out but has a couple of cases of data corruption(?). edit: i only have 3 cameras. the right hand bottom pic in the quad is not normally there as the input is turned off. i wonder if what i thought was faulty camera is actually a recorder issue. any ideas?

end of the day its the customers who simply don't care. i would go and remind them of what would happen if/when that system electrocuted someone.

i havn't seen any firmware updates for this model. hardrive is one of the ones on aver's compatibility list and was working fine for a while. it could be vibration as i had to custom mount it. i may have to try a laptop hardrive. however would be nice to know if its a unit problem or hardrive issue.

that coaxseal is the stuff. i haven't seen it sold over here but i have used it on satellite installs. very good stuff. however insulation tape will work ok. best stuff is the cheap STRETCHY tape. you need to stretch the hell out of it when you put it on. only problem we tend to have is our high UV eats it over the years.

ok not really a security camera, just a board camera used as reversing camera on a vehicle. just wondering what would cause this problem. lots of horizontal lines. intermittent fault. it did go away when power off/on. now have it on fully regulated power and its still does it intermittently. possible board fault? pic to come. attachments not working

i would be interested to see what temps your HD's are running at. for a windows pc theres plenty of monitoring software. for me the only times i've come across HD failure is due to bad install. one was that they bolted another drive hard up against the original drive, they got so hot you could not hold your finger on one. died about a year later even after it was shifted. i've had others that ran so hot the pc's kept crashing. the case had NO air vents. the hardrives never died even tho they would have been near on fried. the other thing......what drives are you using. some drives are notorious for putting out lots of heat. the other possibility is to use 2.5" drives. lower power consumption which = less heat produced.

the problem with PCI is the PCI bus is shared. when running big data cards the bus tends to get flooded and it all goes to a crawl. especially so if you have data capture like cctv and gigabit lan cards installed. older designs used to be worse as the onboard sound/lan/etc where shared with the pci bus. PCI bus has been a big bottle neck for a long time, so the PCIe was very welcome. unfortunately manufactures where very slow of the mark producing cards in PCIe. don't forget the PCI 133MB/s limit is never actually achieved. most pc's run far less than that.

90 is ok, should not get HD failures at that air temp. 100+ start to worry.

whats normal air temp there ? (Fahrenheit or Celsius??)

PCs get hot that is how they are. Especially in hot environments. Not everybody can run AC all the time. You can add all the fans in the world you want but those Hard drives will still get hot if they are in a hot location, as that air from the fans will just be hot air. exactly. you have to build the location etc to suit. we used to have to build vents, fans etc just to get cooler air to the equipment. SSD might be ok for those countries that are in permanent heat waves !

picture wise they look great but what are they like with high speed motion and changes of light ? for the type of use you need to be able to have months of storage. so when you get sent a ticket a month later you can actually go back and reveiw it. any added hardrive needs to be able to record all cameras at once. (2-4 cameras) constantly rather than event based. event based recoding is fine for a crash camera but for other uses you need constant recording. megapixel cameras would be fine with 1TB hardrive recorder.

its a pc, it shouldn't be getting hot to start with. its not really a hardrive problem but a pc building problem. no doubt they are using some cheap pc that's thrown together with no thought about cooling. actually have one on the bench at the moment. no front air intake so the hardrive is cooking ! 2 min with a dremmel fixed that ! also where the pc is placed. it has to be cool. if the hardrives is overheating the rest of the pc will be to. worse case i every came across was tv decoders which where installed in the hot water cupboard ! they had gotten so hot the cables had melted into the side of the units. why they didn't catch fire beats me.

Try google spam and see if you figure out why you cant post link! JD i don't think hes spamming. i know the thread hes meaning. its actually one of the members here (scruit ??) incar DVR setup with gps overlay.

???? servers use hard drivers constantly non-stop for years without problems. manufactures warranties is 3 or 5 years. SSD are NOT immune to failure. if you have design faults in the system you could end up killing expensive SSD drives. if you having hardrive failures its best to work out WHY they are failing. as in the server world your best bet is to back up. couple of 500g hardrives and raid card (if required as lots of motherboards have raid onboard tho they don't all do the required raid level)

i was looking at solid state for mobile DVR systems. if your doing PC based systems why not RAID arrays? cheaper than SSD and when a drive fails plug a new drive in and let it rebuild. if your regularly getting HD failures then you really need to look at why. heat and power supply are usually the two main factors, commonly due to cheap PSU and case.

i would be surprised if the rg59 doesn't upset the signal. silicone is a waste of time for sealing as it tends to crack and then lets water in. some of the non-silicone sealants are ok as they don't crack/crumble. used to use some stuff called soft seal. no doubt its under various names. look to see what satellite/aerial installers use. its basically a thick soft Self-Amalgamating Tape. but also don't under estimate the effectiveness of cheap stretchy insulation tape. (except UV eats it after many years)

what DVR and what does it record in (mpeg4, mjpeg etc) ? does the DVR give an optoin to output to avi, mpeg, mov file? if the DVR records in a fairly standard codec then it can be readable. but if its a proprietary codec then highly likly only the DVR software will read it.

its not that great. CMOS sensors, i wonder how they go in changeable light. you still need a recorder. you need 300+gig storage, 16gig internal just won't cut it. and then theres price. ~$2000 (by the time you buy the extra cameras) and then you need to buy the recorder.