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DW Spectrum - Storage Errors

Updated

DW Spectrum Storage Errors

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Affected Roles:  Owner, Power Users

Related Digital Watchdog VMS Apps:  DW Spectrum Professional

Last Edit:  September 13, 2024

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Storage Error Messages

This short guide covers the most common storage-related errors that users may encounter when using DW Spectrum. These errors are referred to as “Storage Failure” in the server’s Event Log.

 

System Disk is Almost Full

The error message “System disk is almost full” appears if the DW Spectrum Server detects that the free space the System partition drops under 1 GB for ARM devices and 5 GB for Desktop devices.

DW Spectrum considers it as an issue which should be resolved immediately as both the device’s OS and DW Spectrum System may suffer significantly. While the OS needs a lot of free space in the device’s storage, DW Spectrum also needs free space to keep important data in the system partition (e.g. system database, motion detection data indexes, audit log, etc.).

 

Not Enough HDD/SSD Speed for Recording to %drive_name%

The error message “Not enough HDD/SSD speed for recording to %drive_name%” indicates that the write speed of the storage drive is too slow.

During the regular recording process, the server keeps all video frames received from every camera stream separate buffers. Meanwhile, other processes of the server try to write frames from such buffers to the physical drive. These buffers have certain reasonable limits, independently in megabytes and in number of frames.

If the storage drive write speed cannot match the rate of incoming video packets/frames, these buffers might overflow. When this happens, DW Spectrum Server must drop the oldest packages. When this happens, the error is generated with the number of dropped frames. Users might find which camera feed specifically suffered from this by reading the main DW Spectrum Server log.

If a user receives such messages randomly/sporadically, from time to time with a low number of packets dropped, there is nothing to worry about for the moment. This merely signals that the system is nearing its limits. If a user is planning to expand the DW Spectrum System, they should expect that the number of dropped packages will drastically increase and should resolve it in advance.

The available options are to:

  • Decrease the incoming bitrate of cameras.
  • Reduce/adjust camera FPS and image quality settings.
  • Add more storage drives. 
    • Or replace storage drives with models equipped with faster read/write speeds.

If a user receives such messages continuously/persistently, there may be a critical issue since footage is constantly being lost. In this case, the user should start to monitor the write capabilities of the disk and check its state. If everything is okay and there are no hardware issues detected, the solutions should be the same as what was mentioned previously.

Additional variables outside of Spectrum should also be considered.  A common factors that can cause this error to occur are:

  • Anti-Virus/ Disk checking software increasing the resources used (such as Sentinel Agent)
  • Patrol Reads/Consistency Checks done by RAID Controllers
  • Large quantities of users viewing archived footage at the same time
  • OS related tasks affecting the media drives

It is recommended to use tools such as Resource Monitor and Task Manager to determine if there are other processes that are using disk resources.

 

I/O Error Occurred

The error message “I/O error occurred” means that the operating system (OS) has returned a read/write error message to the DW Spectrum Server upon the command to read or write a data block. Depending on the setup, this message may appear paired with the error message, “Not enough HDD/SSD speed for recording to %drive_name%”.

This should indicate to the user that there is a major issue occurring such as:

  • The OS has encountered bad data blocks.
  • The drive has unexpectedly remounted to a read-only state.
  • The network file system returned remote service inaccessibility.

The user should inspect their drives to diagnose any possible corruption or damage to storage.

 

 

 

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For More Information or Technical Support

DW Technical Support: https://www.digital-watchdog.com/contact-tech-support/

DW Sales: sales@digital-watchdog.com | www.digital-watchdog.com

Rev: 06/25                              Copyright © DW. All rights reserved. Specifications and pricing subject to change without notice.                            

 

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