6480 and vostro 430

[jc322 0]

Is anyone using a dell vostro 430 with 6480? can you explain your experience?

 

Thanks

[bpzle 0]

works great. only snag has been with 1 an outdated bios for the motherboard that caused some goofy PCIe issues. updated, good to go.

[jc322 0]

is that a mini tower?

[bpzle 0]

yes

[jc322 0]

thanks for the reply...

 

What kind of hardrives of your using in there? I know they have to be 3.5 Sata but I was curious if you prefer any one 7200 over another?

 

I believe I can fit an additional two in there correct?

[bpzle 0]

Varies on the hdds.

 

I thought that tower could fit at least 4 total... can't remember.

[Mnorman 0]

Dell's motherboard specs shows four total sata ports on the board. That said, if the case comes with an operating system HDD and an optical drive that only leaves two more spots for additional drives. Not sure if Dell will partition a drive for you out of the box to secure the data, but that is easily done in win 7.

[bpzle 0]

We always have the OS on a separate drive than the video. Some guys partition and put some video on the OS drive but that's just asking for trouble IMO.

[Mnorman 0]

I agree with that since constant writing to any hard drive will be hard on it period. I was alluding to the OS on the C: partition say 100GB and then the E: partition, say 350GB+ for saved footage that you export. That configuration would give a person with a 430 Vostro two free SATA ports for 1-2TB hard drives for Aver to write to constantly.

[jc322 0]

I like the idea of partitioning the OS drive for exporting saved video. You said it was easy to do in windows 7. How can I go about it without messing up the OS? I have my additional two 1TB drives installed.

[rory 0]

For XP the OS partition doesnt need to be more then 40GB, in fact it doesnt need to be more then 8GB (max,could be alot less, I have installed XP on 2TB SSDs, total OS size 400mb or less, not for DVR though) but taking into considering the user backing up video to that same partition on occasion, hence the 40GB size. I had one DVR setup with a 10GB HDD partition for a couple years without any issues, except they started to backup video to that partition and after a year or so, they had forgot to remove it, hence the drive got full - it did not effect the DVR recording though.

 

All the systems I have in the field over the past few years are running the OS and video on the same drive, but seperate partitions. If one partition table goes, the other does not. If one drive fails, well same chance as all or any of them failing. If one wants the max amount of drives some towers can take, then one has to do it that way anyway. If one could afford it then better would be an 8GB Fast SSD(or higher) for OS and 2TB HDDs for video. However it is important to note SSDs have a limited life span.

[jc322 0]

I am running 7 32 bit. What is the best way for me to setup a backup? I wouldn't mind keeping it onsite it doesn't have to be offsite. Any ideas? Would I be able to have real time back-up?

 

 

I will look into partioning my C drive. How much room would 7 32bit need?

[rory 0]

What type of backup do you mean? Just a backup when you need it, or do you mean recording to 2 places at the same time? When Im called to backup I just put it on my USB hard drive drive then burn it for them on my PC, or put it on jump drives as the Cops/lawyers want that sometimes for the courts instead of Optical disks. If its something like a murder then we leave it on the drive for the time being just incase, they dump it later on. I normally just create a folder on the c drive called My Videos and that is set as the default location for backing up video or saving images from the DVR software. They only backup when they need it, its always recording anyway.

 

I dont know about Avermedia's backup though as I only used their DVR cards once.

 

Or do you mean backing up the OS drive?

Best way for that is do image it when the OS is first installed.

[jc322 0]

thanks everyone for the reply.

 

I am referring to recording to 2 places at the same time. I would like to have a second place if someone was able to gain access and steal the computer.

 

is it possible to record to one place and have a real time back up being made to a second place?

 

 

how can i go about partitioning my c drive now without messing with my setup? i was under the impression that would have to be done during the original install.

[rory 0]

Most Windows Software only allow you to Grow the partition, I dont use Windows 7 so cant say (I thought it only lets you grow the partition though).

I use this: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Download and burn to a CD and boot to it, allows resizing down or up.

Watch out for Windows 7 though, thats not a good OS for a DVR IMO.

 

As for recording to 2 locations, not sure what options the Avermedia software gives you. But you could do Raid, or NAS. Can FTP images on motion perhaps. Also, a more expensive route, though maybe no more then a proper RAID setup, is have a second DVR, just loop in and out of one of them to the next. So the normal options would be NAS or RAID, NAS needs a fast network though (?), and I think it depends on the Avermedia software. Not to sure as Ive never needed to do any of that. There is something that always comes back to us when dealing with clients, keep it simple. Worried about them stealing the DVR, perhaps put in a dummy DVR that is easy to notice, lock the other one up good.

 

Some DVRs also have a CMS type software that let you record remotely over the internet on motion detection or on demand, small video files lower quality, and images.

[Mnorman 0]

I could explain the partitioning under win 7 here but it would take a lot of writing. I would suggest to use the windows help on the computer, or you could watch a few videos on partitioning in windows 7 on Youtube. Just search windows 7 partitioning and it will all make sense. My experience with it has always been from hand made computers and not Dells, so naturally you do this at your own risk. I do have to say that it should not mess with your Operating System at all unless you make the OS partition too small, hence the 40-50GB for Win 7 that I suggest. I know some people put other programs like Adobe products and such that create swap files from the C: drive specifically, so one would want to take the OS partition size into consideration with future software upgrades.

 

As far as backing up, I know Avermedia allows backing up manually and by schedule to drives that you choose, whether those be another computer on the same VLAN or onto DVDs and such.

 

I can tell you how I set our department's up since we are law enforcement. When I made the computer I installed the windows xp x86 on the C: partition of a 500GB 7200 HDD. The partition size is 50GB. The remaining partition on that drive (E:) is named Saved Data, for all the criminal archived footage. In the Avermedia sytem window six more SATA HDDs totaling roughly 7.5 TB of space are mapped to the recording function, which gives us about 28 days of saved footage before Avermedia erases and records over the old footage. The only backup of the data we do is from our E: partition to a second computer that gets sent to the prosecuting attorney's office with our arrest reports on a CD or DVD depending on the size. We just write the data in .dvr format and include the player on the disk, since it seems that Avermedia is sort of spotty on converting the MPEG or AVI. So, in essence, by the end of a criminal investigation we have two computer hard drives with the footage and at least two CD/DVD with the footage and player, oe in the court's hands and the other disk in our file cabinet with the arrest reports.