Then I gravitated to simply backing up all data to a Mac server once a day. Yes, I did experiment with all the different RAID configurations a few years ago (using Apple's DiskUtility or Old World Computing's SoftRAID). I would say that RAID units are typically the best solution when you really need huge amounts of storage, or whole-storage redundancy, otherwise individual drives are the way to go.Īs always, thanks for your expert advice, Ben! However when this happens, and for a significant period after the failed drive has been replaced while the RAID is recovering, it tends to slow down the whole unit significantly, which can lead to problems capturing video during this period.

RAID-5/6) is that they offer whole-storage redundancy, so that if a drive fails, you don't lose any data. One advantage of some specific RAID setups (e.g. When customers ask us for help with drive issues that they have had trouble solving themselves, it often turns out they are using RAID setups, and it's then often difficult to pinpoint and fix the problem. Many customers use RAID setups and they can work well, but they add complexity and therefore failure modes to the system. Desktop Macs give you 4x USB-A ports, and it's easy to add more via Thunderbolt/USB-C hubs if necessary. Any USB 3.x protocol is easily fast enough to cope with a couple dozen cameras capturing continuously to each drive, or many more when capturing based on motion.

It's an easy and inexpensive solution, and provides a certain amount of redundancy - if one drive fails it doesn't bring down the whole storage solution (unlike RAID-0), don't affect all cameras, and is easy to rectify by simply swapping out that one drive. Personally, I go for individual external HDDs connected by USB - multiple of these for larger systems, with the cameras split across them.

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