Without question, surveillance solutions have high expectations and demands for the hard drives supporting them. With duty cycles of up to 95 percent writes and drives typically powered on 24×7, surveillance drives must be designed, tested, and processed to ensure reliable operation. Furthermore, the often critical nature of surveillance data requires drives with specific features that enhance reliability in their environments.
Without question, surveillance solutions have high expectations and demands for the hard drives supporting them. With duty cycles of up to 95 percent writes and drives typically powered on 24×7, surveillance drives must be designed, tested, and processed to ensure reliable operation. Furthermore, the often critical nature of surveillance data requires drives with specific features that enhance reliability in their environments.
Because video surveillance drives face unique demands beyond those of desktop drives, they undergo specific testing and design processes to perform optimally in surveillance applications. Drives are tested against information gathered from actual surveillance scenarios. The firmware is then optimized for the surveillance workload, enabling maximum device efficiency for overall reliability benefits.
While ideal for their purpose, desktop drives lack the functionality to support or withstand a surveillance environment. Designed and tested for lower duty cycles and lower write applications, these drives introduce limitations and liabilities to surveillance systems, including an increased potential for dropped video frames. In contrast, surveillance-optimized drives offer dedicated efficiency in the most demanding security setups and are fine-tuned to support high-quality video content.
Seagate SV35 Series hard drives are specifically engineered for the high-write workloads of 24×7 surveillance systems. This enhanced write functionality is a key factor for favorable performance and drive longevity. ATA-7 streaming commands also allow SV35 Series drives to customize the read/write profile to video- or data-specific payloads, ensuring reliable command execution.
*Table mimics one found in “Purpose-Built Hard Drives for Digital Video Surveillance.” Seagate, 2012.
Power management features increase the lifespan of SV35 Series drives and prevent heat-related failures as well. Current-limiting and spin control features enable better power management for improved reliability during archival periods. Finally, Seagate AcuTrac technology provides accurate read-write operation in challenging operating environments. This proprietary technology improves track accuracy, delivering a robust drive that can withstand environmental influences, including heat and vibration.
Some enterprise drives, like the Seagate Constellation ES drive, are also designed to handle high-write surveillance workloads. These drives are powered by multidrive firmware, with enhanced rotational vibration (RV) tolerance that's ideal for centralized storage. RV censors on the device act like all-wheel drive, helping to balance the drive and keep it on the correct track for optimized reading and writing performance.
The SAS interface also improves reliability by eliminating the single point of failure in SATA drives and offering improved error reporting and data recovery. To ensure reliable drive retirement, with data protection far more reliable than software-based storage, the Constellation ES drive provides SED and FIPS options with support for data encryption and Seagate Instant Secure Erase.
The fleeting footage captured by surveillance systems cannot be recreated if missed due to hard drive failure. Drives containing custom features to intelligently handle surveillance workloads and situations should be part of any digital security solution.
For more information, please visit http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/consumer-electronics/sv35/?cmpid=ctc-_-AS-Oct12
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