Build Advice for a Portable Video Recorder PC

[cKGunslinger]

If I were going to build a portable PC for multi-TB video recording, what would you recommend, given the following "requirements":

• ~200MB/s sustained disk write (preferable in a single drive) for the video capture
• 2-8 TB of (quickly removable) disk space
• As small as possible (portable, preferable with carrying handle)
• At least 1 PCIe slot for a half-height (2U) video capture card (preferably 2)
• Built-in video output
• Fast way to transfer the video to larger, long-term storage

Use case would be to bring the PC to a location, attach to multiple cameras, and begin recording. When a drive is full, remove and pop in a second one (or simply switch over to the second drive.) Meanwhile, begin copying the previous drive to cheaper/slower media (spinning HDs.)

I was thinking maybe a SFF case with a microATX/ITX board, if I could find one with a hot-swappable SATA drive bay.

The 2TB SSDs are pricey, but they would meet the write-bandwidth required. And if they are hot-swappable, maybe I can throw them in a drive duplicator to copy them to cheaper spinning drives (~120MB/s), then reuse them.

Or maybe I just go to [someplace].com and buy [some item]? But I have no idea what the item would be.

Thoughts?

 

[Ken g6]

Does the storage have to be removable if it's really big? Two large spinning drives in raid-0 ought to meet your speed requirement. A case like a Silverstone SG05BB can hold two such drives.

If you really need hot-swap SSDs, there's this: https://www.startech.com/m/HDD/Adapters/usb-3-1-gen-2-sata-adapter-cable~USB312SAT3CB

 

[cKGunslinger]

Ideally, I need to get the data back to a central location, while keeping the high-rate capture capability deployed (little to no downtime.) Pulling HDs in pairs, then re-configuring a new raid might be a bit too much work on-site. And the receiver would have to deal with raided drives as well.

Bandwidth-wise, cheap multi-TB drives via FedEx is hard to beat.