Subscriber Discussion

Purpose Built For Video Hard Drives?

UE
Undisclosed End User #1
May 19, 2015

Hey Group,

Anybody have experience with HDs supposedly engineered for 24x7 surveilance video operation?

TC
Trisha (Chris' wife) Dearing
May 19, 2015
IPVMU Certified
(1)
UE
Undisclosed End User #1
May 21, 2015

Thanks, their ad is what prompted my question.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
May 19, 2015

Be nice......

LM
Luke Maslen
May 20, 2015
IPVMU Certified

To date, I haven't had any failures with the slightly older generation Seagate SV35 Series 3TB, ST3000VX000 with the VMS/DVR/NVR set to continuous recording rather than just motion-based recording. However I do always prefer to record to at least 2 hard drives in case one fails. I always connect the VMS/DVR/NVR to a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) to avoid power spikes or power dropouts from damaging the hard drives which should extend their life.

It sounds like you're wanting to build a CCTV system yourself. What have you got in mind? I'm sure you could get some good advice from this forum.

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(1)
UE
Undisclosed End User #1
May 21, 2015

VMS running on a COTS system at approx. 80 locations and approx. 16 channels per with a mix of analog and IP.

LM
Luke Maslen
May 21, 2015
IPVMU Certified

I mistakenly thought you might be a "small" end user. Clearly I was wrong given the size of the system you are planning. Sorry about that!

I have used video surveillance specific hard drives as they were recommended by VMS and DVR manufacturers and my experience has been positive so far. Furthermore the price (in Australia) was about the same as reputable, non-surveillance drives. So I didn't have any compelling reason to ignore the recommendation from the manufacturers.

Avatar
Keith Walker
May 20, 2015

We've deployed well over 100 of the Seagate SV35s (3TB) and haven't had a failure in the field yet. We did have a couple of bad-out-of-box HDs, though.

U
Undisclosed #3
May 20, 2015
IPVMU Certified

We did have a couple of bad-out-of-box HDs, though...

Compared to the worn-out dead-on-arrival (DOA), I find your term and resulting acronym to be superior...

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MG
Michael Goodwin
May 22, 2015

we use the cheapest Seagate Seagate's on Synology Nas units, work awesome, over around five years we've replaced a few, but in Raid 5 arrays with a hot spare it does not matter.

ST4000DM000

Don't believe the BS about "it's made for this"

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #4
May 23, 2015

We use Western Digital RE drives in all of our systems. A couple years ago to try to cut costs we used some WD Black 4TB desktop drives. Since then they have all failed. Each time we had a call for a failed drive it was the Black drive. The RE drives have not failed.

Avatar
Jon Dillabaugh
May 26, 2015
Pro Focus LLC

We used to use the Seagate SV35 and WD AV-GP drives and had great reliability using them. We now are using primarily the WD Purple drives, but if they aren't available, or the Seagate Surveillance drives are cheaper, I wouldn't hesititate to use them.

The only issue that we have found with the surveillance specific drives is that they are not rated by the manufacturers for use in a rack mounted device with multiple drives. They supposedly are lacking a sensor that the enterprise drives have. This sensor monitors vibration caused by other spinning drives that can disrupt a drives normal operation. Enterprise drives can combat this vibration issue somehow.

If I were buying enterprise drives, I would look at the WD RE line.

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