I'm wondering if some of the CPU usage issues I've seen mentioned are contributed to by heavy disk activity? From the manual, it seems every 5 minutes BI5 is looking to move files around to do housekeeping and the 2:00 AM database stuff is just to refresh the database itself.

So I'm wondering 'What If" I set the New folder to accumulate files for 30 days and then just delete them, as opposed to having New files for a short time, then transferring them to the Stored folder. Especially if they are on the same WD Purple drive, that would seem to be potentially a thrashing situation if it's transferring New to Stored while also recording New camera data?

Also, if I was to go into Windows and delete a bunch of file clips I no longer want to keep, will the database automatically clean itself during the 2:00 AM thing?

Your thoughts? Thanks.

So I'm wondering 'What If" I set the New folder to accumulate files for 30 days and then just delete them, as opposed to having New files for a short time, then transferring them to the Stored folder. Especially if they are on the same WD Purple drive, that would seem to be potentially a thrashing situation if it's transferring New to Stored while also recording New camera data?

My thoughts: If "New" and "Stored" are on the same drive, then there is no advantage in moving files from one folder to the other. If however, you use a fast SSD for "New", and a mechanical drive for "Stored", then the two+ folder method makes sense.

Lot of chatter about "thrashing" which I think is not actually a thing anymore.

Disks are made for reading from and writing to and they have specs for how much they can do of each. They have caches and can move their heads very quickly. If they couldn't read/write the desired rates they wouldn't be listed as specs. I'll bet that if you calculate you look at your bitrate in your BI Status window you are no where even near the specs of your disk.

To look at this more scientifically,

Go to the BI Status screen and look at the total bitrate for all cameras.

That is the bitrate you need to support for writing to the disk.

I have only one folder, not the new/stored so that is all my disk needs to support for unattended recording of all my cameras.

Now if you want to move from new to stored, then you need to add in the workload of reading from the new disk and writing to the stored disk (perhaps the same actual disk if new and stored are on the same drive which is silly).

There would be some additional overhead for any user viewing.

Take that estimate and compare it to what you see in the Performance Monitor (I see %idle time for each disk, maybe even start here). Or the Resource Monitor that shows actual disk I/O.

You could just start with the Performance and Resource Monitors and skip the calculations.

Thanks to all who responded. I think for now I will just do away with the Stored folder. If I get a second SSD to put the New folder on--instead of on the Purple drive--then I will revisit this. I'm new with Blue Iris so haven't got into the Performance Monitor thing yet, but I will check it out. Thanks again...

I would keep the purple drive for the NEW folder and use an SSD or other HD for the BI operating system. Under each cameras record tab I have the "Combine or cut each clip" to 1 hour as the files are easier to manage and search through. I have the size set to 4gb but with my 10fps clips are normally about 1gb. With these settings the system gets a little workout every hour on the hour.
Rather than setting new to delete after 30 days you could set , "clips and archiving" to about 80% of your HD capacity. example, I have a 10TB drive so I set Limit Size to 8000 GB and unchecked the Limit clip age box. This way once the drive is 80% full it will start deleting the older files as needed.
I am running an OLD I7 1st gen pc and currently 19 cameras. To keep my CPU under the 50% area I have all cameras set to 10FPS and max bit rate to 2048.
I am still a rookie but thought I would throw these things out there. After using BI for 6 months or so, I feel like it was one of the best purchases I have ever made.

Thanks again for the tips. I have now implemented a number of the suggestions I've been given and/or able to research and the CPU is currently running between 10-25 percent, depending on how many of the nine cameras are being triggered--and therefore recording--at once. The cameras are 5 MP each running at 15 frames/sec.
At this point I have to say that I love the Blue Iris software and I'm now happy with the CPU utilization. Am moving on to other little issues I'd like to solve, will post a new thread for that... Thanks again.