How to prevent NX Witness from creating HD Witness Media folders all over the place?
Answered
Hey everyone, I thought this would be straight forward, but I'm mainly using NX Witness to just have a quick view at select CCTV cameras. Not recording, don't have a licence. However that is not preventing every external drive I plugin from having a HD Witness Media folder created by default.
How do I turn this off? I checked local settings, admin settings....
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Hello @...,
Unfortunately, at the moment we do not have a solution that we could advise you. But most likely it will appear in a month.
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- Authorized Reseller
Hello @...,
We just received a report from a partner with the same problem.
Not only does it create a folder on a USB drive whenever it is connected to the USB drive, it also does now allow the user to safely remove the USB, who always gets the warning "Device is in use, do not disconnect" (or similar).
Can you confirm if this only happens in the latest version 4.2.0.33306?
Can we revert to a previous build, while this issue is not solved?
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Dear @... and Miguel Câmara,
Please check THIS support article about how Nx manages its storage and THIS support article about how to enable and disable USB storage.
The warning "Device is in use, do not disconnect" is a standard notification of the operating system, since you have to eject any USB storage from the OS before you pull it out of the system, otherwise the storage might be corrupted, and you lose data.
We do not confirm this issue. But if you would like to downgrade, please check THIS support article.
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Hey Norman I'm not 100% sure that is the solution. The second link on how to enable and disable doesn't mention how to disable. Only how to enable, and it also says "By default, this is disabled since it has significant downsides".
I've still created the by default non-existent registry string and given it a value of 0. I am yet to reboot, but let's see if that does it. I like how you do not confirm the issue but... :)
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Hi @...,
Did the reboot resolve the issue?I do confirm the issue exist(ed), but it should be resolved when you use Nx Witness 4.2+.
The issue existed in July 2020 on a Windows instance in Vbox.If the reboot didn't resolve the issue, can you tell me more about your system?
- Are you using virtualization for the Nx Witness Mediaserver?
- What OS are you using for the Nx Witness Mediaserver?
- Does the issue occur with USB thumbdrives or USD diskdrives or both?
- Can you provide the output of the following API call with the USB drives plugged in and share the output?
api/storageSpace
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Hey Norman
no, it did not.
I'm running Nx Witness Mediaserver 4.2.0.32840 on a Windows 10 machine.
The HD Witness Media folder is created on both thumb and disk drives regardless.
Here's the output:
{"error":"0","errorString":"","reply":{"storageProtocols":["smb"],"storages":[{"freeSpace":"80765456384","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":false,"isWritable":false,"reservedSpace":"11502983168","storageId":"{05481477-c9a1-1d28-b99d-f4a1cca8934e}","storageStatus":"used|tooSmall|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"115029831680","url":"H:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"684128841728","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":true,"isWritable":false,"reservedSpace":"32212254720","storageId":"{ab1172d8-5b64-6ec2-4985-9740bdbe1081}","storageStatus":"used|tooSmall|system|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"998590377984","url":"C:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"2088169279488","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":true,"isWritable":true,"reservedSpace":"32212254720","storageId":"{55e6fa80-dacd-9770-95ea-76cfad1f8165}","storageStatus":"used|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"4000768323584","url":"F:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"432337678336","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":true,"isWritable":true,"reservedSpace":"32212254720","storageId":"{9fd5d55b-5d55-8ca4-cd95-c2151d5efc88}","storageStatus":"used|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"2000396742656","url":"E:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"29878534144","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":true,"isWritable":false,"reservedSpace":"32212254720","storageId":"{6e810ac8-815d-3d9f-82b1-134ea1dbd0f1}","storageStatus":"used|tooSmall|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"30750179328","url":"J:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"1127421800448","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":true,"isWritable":true,"reservedSpace":"32212254720","storageId":"{2f5260bd-c601-46e5-1d6d-84797b281a90}","storageStatus":"used|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"4000650883072","url":"B:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"5328337547264","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":true,"isWritable":true,"reservedSpace":"32212254720","storageId":"{2edfc100-ba68-5186-2b64-a1de3fa43ffe}","storageStatus":"used|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"8001545039872","url":"D:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"165321502720","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":false,"isWritable":false,"reservedSpace":"24992389120","storageId":"{61855a74-d730-8bbc-9b3a-0813f11c6821}","storageStatus":"used|tooSmall|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"249923891200","url":"G:\\HD Witness Media"},{"freeSpace":"444045017088","isBackup":false,"isExternal":false,"isOnline":true,"isUsedForWriting":true,"isWritable":true,"reservedSpace":"32212254720","storageId":"{7f1108b7-27f7-3931-a518-2f4f6a65a6a2}","storageStatus":"used|dbReady","storageType":"local","totalSpace":"2000363188224","url":"K:\\HD Witness Media"}]}}0 -
Thank you, @...,
All drives are reported as 'local' drives, while USB drives should report themselves as 'USB' drives and subsequently ignored by the system.
Could you clarify which drive numbers are USB drives?
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Hi there,
I am also experiencing this frustrating behaviour with Ubuntu server. I wish to use a single location on a single hard drive only which is set to my main drive, yet NX Witness 5.0.0.35064 continuously and aggressively (re)creates 'HD Witness Media' folders in the root of my raid array and within each subfolder of the root of my raid array. If I delete them, NX Witness just recreates them. How can I blacklist the path to my raid array from inclusion in NX Witness? Thanks
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Hi @...,
I would say this is the design of the Nx Witness.
Nx Witness will scan all the storage volumes on the server, to discover and get the record of how many storage volumes can be used to do the recording.
Though, Nx Witness creates the HD Witness Media folder on the root path of each storage volume, it will only write the video archive to the storage volume(s) which is enabled by the user.
Therefore, you can just leave the HD Witness Media there, Nx Witness will not consume the storage volume unless you enable the storage volume for recording.However, this draws my attention:
NX Witness 5.0.0.35064 continuously and aggressively (re)creates 'HD Witness Media' folders in the root of my raid array and within each subfolder of the root of my raid array.
Could you share the following information with us?
1. The screenshot of the Server Settings > Storage Management page.
2. The architecture of the RAID array.
Do you mount the different subfolders to the OS?Thank you.
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This behaviour of Nx is still one of my biggest gripes with the software, even more so with V5 which 'understands' ZFS and has polluted all my ZFS volumes.
Nx witness seems to be designed only for a dedicated Nx machine and is not a well behaved software on a server with more than one purpose.
I am looking now into putting Nx Witness into a virtual machine on my server or a docker container.0 -
2 and half years later, this is still an issue with no option to change it. Can we have at least an option like the usb key to disable it ?
VM is not an option and docker container is still too risky to have the license invalidated
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Hello Antoine,
I hope this message finds you well. I came across your comment and took a moment to investigate the issue. I plugged in a 1 TB USB drive to replicate the scenario, but I couldn't observe any folders being created. For USB, this should be disabled by default.
Nevertheless, we would be delighted to assist you further by examining your system. Please consider submitting a support ticket with all the necessary information outlined in our support article, linked HERE.
In terms of virtualization, it's worth mentioning that a significant number of individuals, ourselves included, rely on virtualization on a day-to-day basis. I'm not sure where you heard not to use a virtual machine, as it is a commonly employed and reliable practice. More information about using Nx Witness in a virtual environment can be found in THIS support article.
It's important to note that Docker is considered an experimental feature, primarily designed for integration development. Therefore, caution is advised when considering its use in a production environment.Best regards.
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The problem is not only usb but every hard drive (external and internal). I have not said virtualization is not possible, but it would not be an option (for us)
That's why I said it would be risky
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Hi Antoine,
Currently, we do not offer an option to block any storage drive, and there are no immediate plans to make changes in the near future.
For optimal performance, we suggest allocating dedicated hardware or a virtual machine for the VMS. This ensures both availability and reliability, preventing any potential interference from other applications
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