Installing Seagate OEM 500gb IDE HD in CPcam DVR

[fas 0]

I need to install 2 Seagate 500gb OEM drives that I purchased from Newegg into a cpcam 505 8 channel dvr. Do the drives need to be formatted before they are installed? If not, are they basically "plug and play"? Thanks.

[scorpion 0]

They are plug, and play.

 

Do you have a manual?

[fas 0]

DVR arrives Monday so no manual yet. I justed wanted to make sure I didn't need to format. Since it's an OEM drive and not retail, does this make any difference?

[scorpion 0]

No.

 

Only Quality matters. You get what you pay for as they say.

 

I sent you a copy of the manual. There is a list of approved hard drives.

[Scruit 0]

I put a 500GB Western Digital in my CPCam 576W after it puked the 250. Plug & play.

[scorpion 0]

Do you have it set for the option to overwrite automatically?

 

Overwriting View

If you activate overwriting mode, you will also see “-OW-â€

[DVR MAN 0]

If you have overwrite enabled the drive should re record over the old data from the beginning to end. No need for you to clear it and start again.

[Kiwi 0]

But it does - it erases 8GB of the oldest data at a time, as needed.

[Metal Shaper Man 0]

I don’t know your DVR at all but, had a thought that might be worth looking into. On my DVR the settings allow you to set portions of the HD to 10%, 20% or what ever percentage for alarm, emergency, manual and some others. In a since you are partitioning the HD. For example, if you have set the HD to use 10% for alarm recording, the DVR will not overwrite that 10% until it is completely full. However, the 90% left for manual recording may have become completely full several times before the 10% alarm portion fills depending on the amount of alarms. It may be worth checking your settings to see if your DVR has that feature.

[Metal Shaper Man 0]

Your comments made me think of something else you might look into. This may sound unusual but, when installing a second HD in my DVR you must set the second HD as master along with the first. I don’t know what the result would be if I had set the second HD as a slave. However, I would think it just wouldn’t recognize the second HD. Anyway, you might want to check the manual for that too.

[Scruit 0]

My current CPD576W has a 500GB hard drive. It is set to "Overwrite" and puts "M-OW" on screen in the top right corner (Manual record, OverWrite).

 

I have the system configured for 1fps per channel when there is no motion, and 25fps total when there IS motion.

 

I have about 7 days of history at any given moment. The overwrite works as described and I never have to clear the Hard Drive.

[rory 0]

Just a quick note, CPCam (AvTech) DVRs are budget units, so don't expect to get a mountain out of a mole hill, if you catch my drift.

[Scruit 0]

Let me get the description right...

 

When the HD is cleared, is there a counter telling you that you have ~480GB of free space?

 

 

Now, as the DVR fills up that free space counter drops...

 

When it drops to zero - what happens? Does it show the free space suddenly increase by a number of GB (80?) and then count down again? And repeatedly jump to 80Gb and slowly drop to zero?

 

If so, this seems to be normal... ie when it fills up it will clear a block of space by dropping the oldest data. Overwrite mode does NOT mean it wipes the HD clean and starts again!

 

 

The best test is to do this:

 

1) Clear the HD. Write down the time and date and available space.

2) Every day write down the time/date of the earliest available recording, and available space, as the available space drops slowly over several days.

3) When the available space gets to zero and then jumps up again, continue to write down the earliest available date/time and available space for about 4 or 5 more days ( a couple of cycles of the 80GB). Also, right after the ~480GB reaches zero, write down the number of days of history you had.

 

 

Finally - look at each of the "earliest time/date" you have recorded every day and tell us which of the following behaviours best describes the pattern:

 

 

A) NORMAL BEHAVIOUR

- "Earliest Time/Date" is the same each day while the ~480GB HD space is declining slowly and gives a maximum of X days history.

- After the HD space jumps back up to 80GB the "earliest time/date" moves on a day or two

- Each time the HD space reaches zero and jumps back up to 80GB the "earlest time/date" moves on a day or two, but is always roughly the same X number of days of history.

 

This would indicate that everything is fine. The DVR is not going to wipe the HD clean each time it fills, otherwise you may lost vital recent video after it wipes. It should record until the HD is full, then cyclically re-allocate large blocks (80GB).

 

If you imagine your HD split into 6 blocks of 80GB:

 

- It will record to blocks 1-6 sequentially when it starts with a clean HD.

- Then it will clear and and reallocate the oldest block (1) for new video, leaving blocks 2-3-4-5-6 intact.

- Then when block 1 is full again it will clear and reallocate the oldest block (2), leaving blocks 3-4-5-6-1 intact.

- It will do this forever, and will always show an amout of free space that is equal to, or smaller than, the amount of space it allocates in each block.

 

So, if you are worried becuase your 480GB space dropped slowly to 0, the only jumped back up to 80GB - that's perfectly fine and normal - the most important thing is that the amount of history you have averages within a day or two of your number of days of history you had just before the HD 'filled up' for the first time.

 

Now, bear in mind I'm not a DVR expert, but I am a database engineer and I know a thing or two about disk caching - the concept is identical.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

B) ABNORMAL BEHAVIOUR PATTERN 1

- "Earliest Time/Date" is the same each day while the ~480GB HD space is declining slowly and gives a maximum of X days history.

- After the HD space jumps back up to 80GB the "earliest time/date" shows it only has only a tiny fraction of the X number of days of history.

- Each time the HD space reaches zero and jumps back up to 80GB the "earlest time/date" shows it only has only a tiny fraction of the X number of days of history. It never gets back up near the X number of days of history.

 

This would indicate that the HD filled up with the first X number of days, for example 7 days, then once it came time to allocate more space it 'loses' the pointers to all the old video so it starts recording again in the 80GB allocated space. Then each time it allocates another 80GB it 'loses' the pointers to the old video again - each time it does this it's as if the old video simply doesn't exist even though the drivespace is marked as used. I also have an old OEM DVR kicking around here that has a bug in the search feature that cannot search for video if the month is December, it will say there's no video apart from the current recording - which it promptly 'loses' next time the DVR starts recording. I have to set the DVR to November again during December.

 

CPCam/AVTech support would have to help you here.

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C) ABNORMAL BEHAVIOUR PATTERN 2

- "Earliest Time/Date" is the same each day while the ~480GB HD space is declining slowly and gives a maximum of X days history.

- After the HD space jumps back up to 80GB the "earliest time/date" does not change, or it may advance a day or two the first time only.

- Each time the HD space reaches zero and jumps back up to 80GB the "earlest time/date" does not change and the number of days of history continues to grow - however a window opens up between the first X number of days and the most recent couple of days. ie the DVR claims 15 days history but you can only recove video from the fisrt few days and the last day or two - everything between is blank.

 

This indicates that the DVR is unable to reuse the hard drive space or overwrite it at all. ie you got 7 days of history as the HD filled up, but once the HD was full and it allocated 80GB space it repeatedly allocated the SAME space over and over and over. Your first 7 days are recorded on 420GB of HD space and that space is never touched again - the DVR keeps allocating the same 80GB block over and over to record the current data - but that will only give a day or two of history, so 15 days after starting the experiment you will have the first 5-7 days still saved, then no data for several days, then you have the last day or two.

 

This is a bug that would require CPCam/AVTech support.

[Scruit 0]

The more I read your posts the more I suspect you are expecting hte freespace to jump back up to ~480 when the HD fills up. It won't. You don't want it to! Imagine if your house is broken into at 3pm, then the HD fills up at 4pm and wipes itself clean, and then you get home to a burglarized house at 5pm and have only an hour of useless video on your HD.

 

Think of the HD not as being like a VHS tape where you record a full tape then rewind and record again... Think of it more like a loop of tape - the oldest recording is always about to be recorded over again by new data, and at any moment you can stop recording, start playing back at the oldest part of the loop and have the full capacity of the loop as a single continuous recording.

[rory 0]

Drift caught. Trust me, I expected problems out of this thing; crashing, locking up, random powering down, shoddy recordings, possibly smoke coming out of it.

 

The thing just works, whirs its little fan and doesn't complain.

 

 

Say smoke ...

[blowrabbit 0]

I recently installed 2 seagate 500gb ata ide HDD's in a 2005 GE DVRMe Pro. I was surprised that although it has a 16 mb cache it still works. Booted up fine as the drives were new and I love the 5 yr warranty on the drives. So yea, its got a terabyte, not bad for a couple hundred bucks. I had been told by support that the max was 8 mg ?

[mr.surveillance 0]

DVhost:

That machine should, (I said should), overwrite the HD continue to overwrite the whole drive, (over and over and over)...

I've sold this machine under various name brands in the past and have had no problems with the overwrite function. There is a firmware upgrade dated 4/24/07 ver. 2.0.11 so you might want to check to see if it needs an upgrade. I was selling this machine as a bottom end promo and found it to be unsatisfactory, even as a promo. They worked fine, but the end result; the video sucked...

As far as the smoke you mentioned it brings to mind a conversation I had years ago with a kid working in the local auto parts store and he told me "All electrical parts contain smoke, if the smoke leaks out of the part there is no way to put it back in so you just have to change the part"

 

One way or another, you pay for what you get.

[Kiwi 0]

I've never found this confusing. The "oldest" 8GB of data changes every time it fills up - it's not the same 8GB - it's the "current" oldest data not the "original" oldest data.

 

My AVTech 782 DVR has been on overwrite for months and I can play back a recording made 8 days ago, approximately the time period my 60GB disk can record 4 channels continuously at 7 IPS.

[Scruit 0]

They worked fine, but the end result; the video sucked...

 

What about the video sucked? The image resolution? Image quality? Framerate? Are you talking about the MPEG4 wor the MJPEG compression? I beliege the 561 uses MJPEG for D1 and MPEG4 for CIF.

 

My 576 uses wavelet compression and only has D1. How does that compare to the 507HC's MPEG4 D1 compression?

 

 

As far as the smoke you mentioned it brings to mind a conversation I had years ago with a kid working in the local auto parts store and he told me "All electrical parts contain smoke, if the smoke leaks out of the part there is no way to put it back in so you just have to change the part"

 

Since I first picked up a transistor and compared it to the valves from myold radio, I have been told the same thing by electronics mentors... "They run on Magic Smoke" They will continue to work, right up until you "let the smoke out". Once you let the smoke out, they quit working. These days I still use that phrase, and it confuses a lot of folks. "Hey, I need to get a new DVR becuase I let the smoke out of the old one."

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and I hate the phrase "You get what you pay for" because it's not always true. I prefer "You pay for what you get, but you don't always get what you pay for".

 

ie You can pay $1000 for a $500 DVR - but you sure ain't gettin' a $1000 DVR for $500.

[Scruit 0]

I've never found this confusing. The "oldest" 8GB of data changes every time it fills up - it's not the same 8GB - it's the "current" oldest data not the "original" oldest data.

 

My AVTech 782 DVR has been on overwrite for months and I can play back a recording made 8 days ago, approximately the time period my 60GB disk can record 4 channels continuously at 7 IPS.

 

Also bear in mind that the manuals of most budget electronics devices are written in 'Engrish'.

 

"Many congratulation on your purchasing of this fine item, which will fill you day will happyness and excellent recording video!"

 

 

How easy would it be for somone in the US division of these companies (or even a registered supplier/importer, or even just a contractor) to just go over the english version of manual once and smooth out the wording a little.

 

I have never though that the "oldest 8Gb" means the same area is constatly overwritten - becuase once it's overwritten with new data then it's no longer the oldest data! But maybe that's because I'm in the IT field and know all about hard drive and memory management in high data volume applications.

 

I believe that DVHost is just describing normal operation and is confused by the poorly written "Engrish" manual.

[Kiwi 0]

Additionally, the video as viewed over LAN is not that great either. However, if you download the video to your computer, the video is nice.

Same experience here. Realtime playback over the monitor output or remote viewing seems to be MJPEG and is not nearly as clear as the MPEG4 that you can only get as a download or by writing to CD or USB, if your DVR is so equipped.

 

Regarding "smoke," IMO the 782 DVR (and no doubt others in the range) have poorly designed cooling air flow. To mitigate that I've installed a blower-style fan in the CD drive bay.

 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the AVtech DVR as it has shown consistent performance and reliability over many months when I'm overseas. My main concern was recovery from power brownouts, etc, as our power can be flakey.

[DVR MAN 0]

I emailed the company that I purchase from about this issue. They state that some DVRs record 8MB blocks of the oldest data at a time until the whole drive is overwritten. So, the oldest 8 MB is overwritten, then the second oldest 8Mb , etc until the drive is full again.

[bfaridnia 0]

Any updates on this? I am having the same problem, except I cant even get mine to record over the earliest 8GB.