Large Storage Partitions for Surveillance DVRs
It is downright amazing how many people are struggling with large volumes for storage, even on Vista and Windows 7.
Here are the SUPER BASIC rules. There are only three of them, so pay attention, M’Kay?
- You CANNOT install windows on a standard MBR disk and then extend it beyond 2 TB. Forget it. It WON’T work.
- You need to create your disk as a GPT disk FIRST. Then, if you want to put an OS on it, you can. But I don’t recommend it. See REALLY CRITICAL NOTES below.
- As a best practice you need to boot from an MBR drive and store video on a GPT disk.
OK, now the long version.
MBR disks: You’ve been using this since the dinosaurs became extinct. For most applications, you’ll continue using it until the aliens give us new technology. These drives can typically only have four partitions, and Windows (all flavors, without a huge effort) can only effectively use 2 TB of space on a MBR disk. This means that if you want lots of storage, you don’t use these.
GPT disks: This is the new delicious flavor, and as such it is rare and difficult to find in ordinary use. GPT volumes offer several benefits:
- They allow up to 128 primary partitions.
- They allow a much larger volume size – greater than the 2 TB, which is the limit for MBR disks.
- Provides greater reliability due to replication and cyclical redundancy check (CRC) of the partition table.
- Can be used as a storage volume on all x64-based platforms, including platforms running Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. Windows Server 2003 SP1 also enabled support for GPT in x86 versions of the Windows Server 2003 family.
REALLY CRITICAL NOTES:
- Windows x64 Editions and Windows Server 2003 SP1 operating systems support the use of GPT volumes as data volumes ONLY! This is because x64 and x86 architectures do not support an EFI boot partition and you simply cannot use a GPT drive to boot an x64-based computer with a legacy BIOS.
- On Intel Itanium platforms, Window supports the use of GPT drives as boot drives OR data volumes.
So, what the heck does this all mean? Here is the long version of how to handle this. You’ll need to following to try it out:
- A PC Built with at least two logical drives. One needs to be a MBR disk. This is where you will install windows.
- The 2nd logical drive should be larger than 2TB, so we’re talking about a RAID array until they come out with individual hard drives bigger than 2TB. I would suggest a 3-Ware RAID card, but lots of people in the surveillance business use Highpoint cards and they seem to work fine as well.
- A capture card and related software.
Here are the steps you need to follow:
- Enter your RAID BIOS and create a 2TB RAID array. It really should be RAID 1, 5, or 10 guys.
- Install Windows on this 2TB array, using about a 64 GB partition for Windows.
- Let the PC sit tight while the RAID array finishes initializing. Just take my word on this one.
- Once the array has initialized, create the largest partition you can (using disk manager) in the remaining space on your 2 TB array.
- Install your capture card software on your C: drive (the 64GB partition) and point it to use the bigger partition for storage.
- OK, no you have a stable DVR with a 2TB system and you still have MORE than 2TB leftover in your RAID card for further storage. This is where you make your GPT partition.
- In your RAID management software, make a RAID 5 (10 if you have the drives) array with all remaining disks on the controller. This should wind up being > 2 TB.
- Once this new logical disk has initialized, open drive manager, and convert it to a GPT disk.
- Voila! Now you can create a huge volume (or many volumes) using all the space in that RAID array!
Here are some wonderful links to further explain MBR and GPT disks:
GPT Disks – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
MBR Disks – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
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