Large Rugged Storage (for videos)

[Spinal]

Here's a question that I'm struggling to answer...

I'm planning on bringing a few cameras onto the mongol, at least one of which will be a dash cam recording 24/7. I don't want it to loop, and would rather keep all the videos so that I can do a stop-motion thing later (and keep track of how many "fines" we need to pay)

Any suggestions as a way to do this? I may bring a laptop, but it won't have TB of storage needed to keep weeks of video.

Portable HDD are an option, but I'm worried about wrecking them on the roads.... and I still think I would need a fair few... (I'm guessing 30-50gb for an hour of recording at 1080p - or about 500gb a day if we only record while driving. So a total of 14TB of storage... which won't be light).

Any ideas?

M.

 

[Giantvanman]

If you drop down to 720p, you should get just over 1GB per hour I believe (doing some rough arithmetic). An awful lot less money to buy and cards to carry compared to 1080p.

 

[Sp!ke]

A dashcam on 1080p @30fps will do about 12GB an hour.

Your Mongol trip is 30 days or more so you're looking at a lot of storage there.

I was initially going to recommend something solid state but with that amount of storage required, it'll be cost prohibitive.

Even using something like the Transcend rugged drive, you'll be needing 10 of them or more so it's going to be expensive.

Money no object, then lacie have a rugged SSD based tunderbolt drive. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A3TBLK6/?tag=amazon0e9db-21

 

[whitenemesis]

Satellite phone upload?

 

[MancMike]

Don't worry about road vibration or the odd bump hurting the drive. Some Sat navs have HDDs, and people install car PCs with HDDs too.

The G forces HDDs can withstand both while parked (heads off disc) and running is so high you'd need to crash the car to get even close to the Gs needed to cause a head crash and even then you're only risking loosing "some" of your data.

Or go SSD. They have no moving parts, but cost far more per GB. Although I've bought a few 128GB SSDs for around £50 each now, which is a bargain for very fast fragmentation-proof storage.

 

[Spinal]

Satellite phone upload?

My satellite phone's data link is 9600 baud... it'll be there a while uploading the 300GB or-so of data each evening

A dashcam on 1080p @30fps will do about 12GB an hour.

Your Mongol trip is 30 days or more so you're looking at a lot of storage there.

I was initially going to recommend something solid state but with that amount of storage required, it'll be cost prohibitive.

Even using something like the Transcend rugged drive, you'll be needing 10 of them or more so it's going to be expensive.

Money no object, then lacie have a rugged SSD based tunderbolt drive. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A3TBLK6/?tag=amazon0e9db-21

Money is definitely an object... the car itself costs £300. I'm thinking instead of SSD, I may just buy a bulk-load of SD cards now. 40 or so 16GB SD cards @ 720p (as suggested) should do 40 days or so and not weight too much... nor cost too much.

If you drop down to 720p, you should get just over 1GB per hour I believe (doing some rough arithmetic). An awful lot less money to buy and cards to carry compared to 1080p.

I'm probably going to go down this route... just need to do some testing with the dashcam (which I haven't bought yet, but will probably be one or two SJ4000 following Spike's suggestion on another thread).

Don't worry about road vibration or the odd bump hurting the drive. Some Sat navs have HDDs, and people install car PCs with HDDs too.

The G forces HDDs can withstand both while parked (heads off disc) and running is so high you'd need to crash the car to get even close to the Gs needed to cause a head crash and even then you're only risking loosing "some" of your data.

Or go SSD. They have no moving parts, but cost far more per GB. Although I've bought a few 128GB SSDs for around £50 each now, which is a bargain for very fast fragmentation-proof storage.

Uhmm... the cars going on 10k miles, a good portion of which is corrugated roads. These are known for rattling engine mountings off, shattering windows/windscreens (happened in a lada to me) and deploying airbags (last timbuktu... quite funny as I wasn't in the car but in the car behind).

Think of throwing your HDD from a 3"-6" height, at 30-40mph, about 20 times a second... That's roughly what the shocks put up with... and once they eventually give up, all that force is passed into the car

M.

 

[Piff]

I have an SJ4000 which by the time I added a spare battery & memory card, then got caught for import duties came in at over £100
Have a look here - not sure how this stacks up against a SJ4000, or how long the offer is on for.

 

[LTD]

I'd get a flight case with your laptop, a USB caddy and some 3TB NAS drives (WD Red) and download to them daily from your dash cam.

One problem you will be faced with is can you back up your files to ensure your data is safely transferred home ?

 

[Sp!ke]

NAS drives... ha ha ha

I envisage that a NAS would last...oooh ten minutes on corrugations.

Besides, what network and power source will there be in the car?

I think that the recorder needs to have a timelapse function rather than doing it retrospectively so as to save on data.

Run another dashcam separately on 30fps and just archive the interesting bits to disk shortly after the event before it gets overwritten.

This way you'll be fine with just the one 1TB lacie thunderbolt.

 

[Spinal]

Thanks for the suggestions, but why NAS drives? I don't have a network in the micra, not a need to have one (unless I'm missing something).

Power is indeed going to be an issue, and whatever laptop I bring will need a 12v power source. I don't want to bring an alternator (changing 12V DC->240V AC->12V DC sounds like a stupid idea - not to mention the extra weight).

Spike: as the resident SJ expert, does it do timelapse out of the box? I could fit one on the roof in a perspex dome (somehow sealed... silicone or fibreglass resin) and just have it on timelapse, with a second one in the car...

Part of me has this vindictive side that wants to record the police that ask for bribes... so a second camera inside in video mode is a must...

M.

 

[moonloops]

Have you considered a proper stop-motion camera? Not sure if they are sturdy enugh for in-car / rally use though?

We use Brinno cameras to film office constructions etc.. They have water/dust proof covers.

They can take a snap every x mins so no need to edit things down afterwards.

 

[Sp!ke]

Spike: as the resident SJ expert, does it do timelapse out of the box? I could fit one on the roof in a perspex dome (somehow sealed... silicone or fibreglass resin) and just have it on timelapse, with a second one in the car...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTH1QWcrkb4

 

[balge]

Blu-ray disks are about a fiver each, how about just burning a couple every night?

 

[MancMike]

Uhmm... the cars going on 10k miles, a good portion of which is corrugated roads. These are known for rattling engine mountings off, shattering windows/windscreens (happened in a lada to me) and deploying airbags (last timbuktu... quite funny as I wasn't in the car but in the car behind).

Think of throwing your HDD from a 3"-6" height, at 30-40mph, about 20 times a second... That's roughly what the shocks put up with... and once they eventually give up, all that force is passed into the car

M.

There is no impact whatsoever. Those bumps, no matter how severe are just nothing. Crashing the car won't produce enough G force to hurt the drive as the car will crumple, slowing the drive smoothly, so little G force is experienced.

Drives are built to take G forces in excess of 250xG. That's to accommodate the drive being dropped onto a concrete floor where it'll instantly go from whatever speed it reached at x metres per second squared to an instant stop.
Being fixed into a glove-box in your car will not subject the drive to any G force even close to being a problem even if you crashed.

The G force a drive can take while actually writing is considerably less, but still way in excess of the G force your human body can take, so don't worry about it.

 

[LTD]

A NAS drive offers better reliability over an off the shelf drive for little extra money. I'm not suggesting using a full network in a car but taking a number of large capacity drives and a laptop-connected caddy to minimise cost by avoiding numerous external drives. Hence the mention of a flight case for extra protection. I was looking at the option of downloading and storing the data from the dash-cam regularly rather than having constant recording. Just an option .....

 

[Sp!ke]

Drives are built to take G forces in excess of 250xG. That's to accommodate the drive being dropped onto a concrete floor where it'll instantly go from whatever speed it reached at x metres per second squared to an instant stop.
Being fixed into a glove-box in your car will not subject the drive to any G force even close to being a problem even if you crashed..

I agree that an SSD disk can withstand this sort of punishment but speaking from experience, spindle disks are very delicate animals indeed.

 

[Sp!ke]

A NAS drive offers better reliability

They dont offer any extra reliability - they offer redundancy when striped with parity. This would be no help if the backplane rattles its solders loose or the actuating arm falls off on corrugations on multiple disks.

In an environment with high vibrations, spindle disks are a no go.

 

[MancMike]

I agree that an SSD disk can withstand this sort of punishment but speaking from experience, spindle disks are very delicate animals indeed.

Yes delicate when dropped on a hard surface, as that gives g force into the hundreds of G. A car bouncing up and down, no matter how violently won't harm it I'm sure of it. The mass of the car and tyre walls alone are enough to smooth out any deceleration strong enough to be considered an "impact" on the drive.

I'd still go with SSD though.

 

[Sp!ke]

According to Samsung, a spindle disk is rated to 0.5G in operation and a maximum of 60G with the head parked.

Airbags (which Spinal witnessed being deployed by the corrugations) are designed to activate at 60G.

 

[MancMike]

According to Samsung, a spindle disk is rated to 0.5G in operation and a maximum of 60G with the head parked.

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but it seems you're trying to find numbers that prove me wrong. If that's the case, never mind, carry on.

Drive Model Shock Resistance (operating) Shock Resistance (non-operating)
Hitachi 7K250 55 G 350 G
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 60 G 300 G
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 63 G 350 G
Western Digital WD2500JB 65 G 350 G
Olixir Data Vault 3DX 55/60 G 1200 G