Subscriber Discussion

Recommendations For Surveillance 2.5" Hard Drives?

AM
Andrew Montgomery
Jul 10, 2017
IPVMU Certified

I have seen a lot of analysis over good 3.5" hard drives for surveillance. Does anyone have recommendations for a good 2.5" hard drive for surveillance? Capacity can be between 1tb or 2tb.

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Josh Hendricks
Jul 10, 2017
Milestone Systems

This is outdated as it has been a long time since I did the comparison, but 2.5" HDDs benchmarked incredibly slow compared to 3.5" drives in the same class/RPMs last I checked. I don't recall the specific numbers but it was a significant difference - maybe 30-50% slower. I'm guessing because there just aren't as many platters in a 2.5" drive.

Certain form-factors may require the use of these drives though, so I'm interested to hear from others which ones have done well in surveillance.

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Jared Beagley
Jul 10, 2017
Seagate Technology

You're correct, the performance will be different in a 2.5" hard drive than you'd see in a 3.5" counterpart, even with otherwise similar specs as far as things like RPM go. This is because power management is paramount in laptop computers, so 2.5" laptop drives are going to prioritize power conservation over raw performance capabilities.

Using a couple of our models in various storage capacities for example, just to get a better picture of what this looks like:

For our 2.5" BarraCuda drives: capacities 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB, startup current specs out at 1.0 A. The average read/write power for the 500GB and 1TB capacities is 1.6/1.7 W, and an average idle power of 0.45 W. The 2TB capacity has an average read/write power of 1.7/1.8 W and an average idle power 0.5 W. The 3, 4, and 5 TB capacities have an average startup current of 1.2 A, an average read/write power of 1.9/2.1 W, and an average idle power of 1.1 W.

Now, for the 3.5" BarraCuda drives: Capacities 500GB, 1TB, and 4TB have an average startup power of 2.0 A. The 500GB and 1TB versions have an average read/write operating power of 5.3 W, and 4.6 W average idle power. The 2TB and 3TB capacities have a startup power of 2.5 W, average read/write operating power of 8.0 W, and 5.4 W average idle power. The average read/write operating power for the 4TB version is 5.0 W, and the average idle power is 2.5 W.

So, as you can see, the 3.5" drives have quite significantly higher power usage, and performance boost in turn. The same power usage in a laptop environment would drastically alter laptop battery life.

The form factor issue you mentioned definitely makes sense. However, we recommend going with form factors that can hold 3.5" drives wherever possible, because in addition to the performance concerns, 3.5" drives engineered specifically with surveillance applications in mind (such as Seagate's SkyHawk drives) are going to be the best bet for ensuring great performance and longevity for your hard drives. These drives are rated for more robust workloads than you're going to see in any laptop drive, 24x7 use, write-intensive use cases like writing 90% of the time and reading the other 10% while managing those massive write blocks as efficiently as possible to preserve the quality of video data.

Here is a video on using the right drive for the right application if you'd like more information.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Jul 10, 2017

We used a number of the Western Digital Dual Black drives, about a couple dozen overall, awhile back and they seem to still be holding up fairly well. These are in outdoor, ruggedized computer chassis that only took 2.5" drives.

http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-800011.pdf

It's a (1) 120GB SSD drive and (1) 1TB HDD platters inside a single 2.5 housing. And since they were the Black series, they had high durability and warranty ratings. The systems had at most 6 or so cameras on them, so it was well within the drives' performance specs.

I think WD discontinued this series, though, without a direct replacement, and we don't have as much a need for them anymore. But I think it was a good idea, maybe one that just didn't catch on enough.

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Jared Beagley
Jul 10, 2017
Seagate Technology

We do offer an SSHD, or Solid-State Hybrid Drive called FireCuda (in both 2.5" and 3.5" sizes) which is in some ways similar to what you mentioned. These drives have a small SSD cache on which the drive intuitively places your most frequently accessed data so that it gets that load-time and performance boost people love about flash tech, but then also has a larger spinning storage capacity for the rest of your data, so you still get good storage space "bang for your buck".

We do have a couple charts that show how they stack up against other drive types comparatively if you're interested. The info compares them for gaming usage and startup times, but still may be useful just to get a look at how they measure up, nonetheless.

The first chart compares game startup times from several popular titles across a traditional spinning 7200 RPM HDD, FireCuda, and an M.2 SSD (128GB). The white is for SSD, the orange for FireCuda, and the grey is for the 7200 spinning HDD.

The next chart compares first 3 days of gaming storage utilization across several popular titles, and SYSmark ratings from various drive types and combinations. First of the grays is 7200 RPM 1TB spinning HDD, second (lightest gray) is FireCuda, third (darkest gray) is an SSD + 7200 RPM HDD combo, purple is SSD + FireCuda combo, and lastly blue is SSD.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Jul 10, 2017

These drives have a small SSD cache on which the drive intuitively places your most frequently accessed data.....

I could see that as a benefit in normal computer operation, but it's hard to think how it would be beneficial in a CCTV scenario where the data is always changing and totally different on average every 15 days to every 30 days.

Also, some VMS systems won't let you designate the OS partition as a storage partition. That was the cool thing about the WD Dual Drive. It showed in the system as two distinct drives from one casing. The 120GB SSD was the OS partition and the 1TB HDD platters were storage.

AM
Andrew Montgomery
Jul 10, 2017
IPVMU Certified

So I am hard-spec'd into the 2.5 inch size. The biggest issue I am having is finding something that is rated for 24/7 use. Seems like there was a handful of them rated for this (your momentus line for instance or WD's AV). With the popularity of the surveillance rated drives, did anyone make one in 2.5 inch?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Jul 10, 2017

Explore Segate Low power 2.5-inch SAS or SATA secure hard drives for high-density storage.

Alternatively consider Seagate Enterprise Performance 15K HDDs, however, these drives offer smaller footprint storage upto 900 GB. These are high performance with extended MTBW.

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Marc Cisneros
Jul 17, 2017

Andrew, WD has been shipping a 2.5", video, 24/7-rated drive line for years now.  It's not marketed much at all, however, since the US channel market is so small.  

The product line is called "AV-25", here is a link to the datasheet on WD's site:  

http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771362.pdf

It does not appear to be featured on WD's website, however the 500GB and 1TB are still selling and considered current models (still being built).  We have sold hundreds of thousands of the 500GB version and thousands of the 1TB version to video security OEM's with great success (success defined as an ultra-low failure rate).

Note that these drives are NOT designed for automotive or any environment that will beat up hard drives (excessive vibration, heat, extreme temperature changes, etc).

You can find these drives at the Newegg as well as some of WD's direct distributors in the USA.

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