request for an odd bit of help...

[tiro_uspsss]

Hello all!

I wanting a wee bit of help with a rather odd problem:

Last year I bought a VIOFO A329T Dashcam. This dashcam has the ability to write to a USB drive. So I purchased an Intel D3-S4510 SATA SSD (3.84TB). I planned on formatting it to ~3TB, chuck it in a USB thingy, connect, bam, done.

Na.

Turns out some Intel (? or enterprise?) SSD have an issue with operating in a USB enclosure. It simply did not show up on my PC, nor the dashcam. There's even an webpage on the Intel site itself in re: to this known issue.

So my odd request for help is this: anyone out there with a Micron, Samsung, etc - anything but Intel - SATA enterprise SSD that can do a quick'n'dirty test, but chucking it in a USB case, & see if their PC will recognise it?

Has to be an enterprise SSD, I need the write endurance, plus obviously consumer SSDs work in USB cases.

 

[BlueFox]

Possibly not supplying enough power? They work fine connected via USB for me.

Better question is why do you think you need a ~4TB enterprise SSD for a dashcam? 128GB SD card intended for high write use will give you hours of video capacity and that dashcam will just delete the oldest footage continuously in a loop. You won't kill it even with a long daily commute.

 

[nexox]

I just dropped a Sandisk Cloudspeed Gen II 1.7TB and an Intel S3700 400GB into a cheap USB 3.0 enclosure and both showed up on my laptop and I could dd from them.

 

[tiro_uspsss]

I just dropped a Sandisk Cloudspeed Gen II 1.7TB and an Intel S3700 400GB into a cheap USB 3.0 enclosure and both showed up on my laptop and I could dd from them.

ah yes, I have the same series, those do work.. unfortunately they don't come in a ~4tb flavour

 

[tiro_uspsss]

Possibly not supplying enough power? They work fine connected via USB for me.

Better question is why do you think you need a ~4TB enterprise SSD for a dashcam? 128GB SD card intended for high write use will give you hours of video capacity and that dashcam will just delete the oldest footage continuously in a loop. You won't kill it even with a long daily commute.

I'm sure my PC was supplying enough power

 

[nexox]

My only SSDs over 2TB are FusionIOs and I suspect they won't be compatible with a dashcam...

 

[BlueFox]

I'm sure my PC was supplying enough power

Either way, what's wrong with an inexpensive high endurance SD card like everyone else with a dashcam? They're literally all of $20: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1466563-REG/

 

[MBastian]

Either way, what's wrong with an inexpensive high endurance SD card like everyone else with a dashcam? They're literally all of $20: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1466563-REG/

Probably 24/7 or months worth of of footage? I wonder if the dashcams firmware ist even up to the task. I've seen too much software that would choke itself to death with too much data.

 

[BlueFox]

Probably 24/7 or months worth of of footage? I wonder if the dashcams firmware ist even up to the task. I've seen too much software that would choke itself to death with too much data.

Any footage that occurs during a collision (or other rapid acceleration) is write protected and you can manually do that by just pressing a button on the unit if desired too. Firmware is fine. The concept of writing and deleting files is about as basic as it gets. Millions of these are used worldwide. I have one from this very brand myself with a 32GB memory card that works just fine after 6+ years of use.

 

[TrevorH]

Does your "USB thingy" support drives over 2TB in size?

 

[tiro_uspsss]

Does your "USB thingy" support drives over 2TB in size?

yes

 

[DarkServant]

Can be the USB case, have you checked it with another SSD? They are mostly relative low-quality and the case chipsets have firmware updates which are not always provided by the manufacturer; for updating it you need to know the exact chipset&revision and risk it with an update from somewhere like station-drivers. I have done this with some "stockplop" cases and it worked without problems (USB 3.0 asm1153e chipset). They work with an sm883 3.84tb, sm863a 1.92tb, sv843 960gb and intel s3510 240gb.
Quality wise i would probably try an ICYNano MB861U31-1M2B with an micron 7450 pro or an samsung pm9a3 if i ever need a newer faster external SSD, but the power draw will most likely more than double, plus the work and risk with all the f/w updates.

And about the high-endurance SD-cards, i'm skeptical because the closest equivalent to datacenter-SSD's are cards like those from Swissbit or ATP etc. and they cost a lot of money. For pSLC it tops out at 128GB for 340$ now in memory crisis. But i bet you will not get some 3rd quality (not-fit-for-ssd) binned NAND.

 

[BlueFox]

And about the high-endurance SD-cards, i'm skeptical because the closest equivalent to datacenter-SSD's are cards like those from Swissbit or ATP etc. and they cost a lot of money. For pSLC it tops out at 128GB for 340$ now in memory crisis. But i bet you will not get some 3rd quality (not-fit-for-ssd) binned NAND.

Seriously, they're fine. Sequential writes do not wear things out anywhere as fast as random IO, which is what they're designed for. Couple other points. Industrial rated SD cards are expensive because of their temperature ratings too. Also, the very vendor you linked specifically pitches TLC, not SLC for video recording, which are a quarter of the price you quoted. Even at maximum bitrate (which is hardly necessary and one of the highest of any dashcam), you would have to do about 3 hours a day of driving to hit 1 DWPD.

Dashcams do not need enterprise SSDs, nor consumer SSDs, nor industrial SD cards. Just inexpensive high-endurance SD cards specifically designed for video recording. You're wasting money on anything else.

 

[DarkServant]

Seriously, they're fine. Sequential writes do not wear things out anywhere as fast as random IO, which is what they're designed for. Couple other points. Industrial rated SD cards are expensive because of their temperature ratings too. Also, the very vendor you linked specifically pitches TLC, not SLC for video recording, which are a quarter of the price you quoted. Even at maximum bitrate (which is hardly necessary and one of the highest of any dashcam), you would have to do about 3 hours a day of driving to hit 1 DWPD.

Dashcams do not need enterprise SSDs, nor consumer SSDs, nor industrial SD cards. Just inexpensive high-endurance SD cards specifically designed for video recording. You're wasting money on anything else.

You're right.
Even if there are some bit errors, in most cases this does'nt destroy the whole footage. And the nature of use is, as you already mentioned, are sequential writes, which are way less stress for the card than small random writes. Plus the dashcam itself would most likely not tolerate those temperatures.


I don't even know what's the real difference in selection of the controller and NAND dies for standard, extendend and industrial grades... probably they buy already binned NAND of high grade, and test them again at an elevated temperatures.
I am kind of paranoid e.g. "you must have ECC-DRAM and an datacenter/enterprise-SSD on your desktop computer" etc. But those things belong in a ZFS-NAS, servers; even standard workstations haven't had ECC RAM and server-grade SSDs (...scsi/sas-harddisks) for a very long time.
I myself have an S-58u microSD card for the smart-phone (those phones hit the wall at high speeds when i get into rage, and the sd-card is a part that survives my fits of rage ...which i'm not proud of ).

I see that advertising focuses on peak read and write speeds "14gb/s read 10gb/s write pcie gen.5, ok ,nice to have". But consumers forget how important latency, data integrity, and data retention are; long-term performance is also crucial. The biggest advantage of switching to solid-state drives was and is the lower latency.


PS: Sorry for my bad english and sometimes wrong research

 

[nabsltd]

So my odd request for help is this: anyone out there with a Micron, Samsung, etc - anything but Intel - SATA enterprise SSD that can do a quick'n'dirty test, but chucking it in a USB case, & see if their PC will recognise it?

I have an Intel DC S3520 800GB drive that I have been using in an external USB enclosure for over a year.

The S3520 has some of the lowest power requirements for an enterprise SSD, and that's why I bought it.

 

[gregsachs]

One issue I ran into with a usb-sata controller I detailed here;

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/odd-data-corruption-issue-usb-sata-adapter.43227/

the short version is that some of these do 512<>4096byte translations and the one I had was buggy.
making sure that the enclosure supports UASP is highly recommended, that allowed the micron storage exec to see the 3.84tb Micron Pro 5400 I was using.

 

[name stolen]

Older but Micron 1100 2TB SATA drives work for me through ASMedia USB-SATA adapters. Low power, pretty good endurance, don't know if PLP (doubt it) but they were sold to enterprise cheaply. 1100 Series maxes at 2TB each though.