Seagate unveiled its latest Surveillance HDD at the China Public Security Expo. Seagate’s new surveillance drive brings 8 TB of capacity to bear, which can store up to 800 hours of HD content captured by up to 64 different cameras simultaneously.
The surveillance HDD market emerged as the HDD vendors expanded into providing specific solutions for each type of workload, and Seagate began developing specialized HDDs for the market ten years ago. On the surface this would appear to be a relatively niche market, but in reality the video surveillance storage industry is predicted to be worth $10.41 billion by 2018 (according to the MarketsandMarkets research firm).
The surveillance industry is booming due to a number of factors. Police organizations are contributing to the rapid expansion of the surveillance market as they store, and manage, the influx of data brought on by the increasing use of body cameras.
The move to high-definition security cameras also requires more storage capacity. For instance, 88 percent of surveillance cameras record 24 hours a day, and it requires 45 GB of storage per day for a 1080p recording at 15 FPS (Frames Per Second). An average single enterprise location has over 250 cameras installed, which balloons the storage requirement to 337.5 TB per month.
All companies have varying requirements for how long they retain surveillance footage, but most stick with the 30-day rule of thumb. However, in some cases this can leave the organization exposed to legal liabilities — most insurance companies require a year of footage retention, which amplifies capacity requirements.
Surveillance HDDs face different operational requirements in comparison to standard desktop-class HDDs. HDD vendors design desktop drives for 2,400 hours of operation per year, but they design surveillance drives for 8,760 hours of operation per year (24×7 operation). Surveillance HDDs are also more durable, with a 180 TB-per-year workload rating, while desktop drives are only spec’d at 55 TB-per-year.
The new 8 TB model features a top speed of 230 MBps. The older models, which come in 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 TB capacities, top out at 180 MBps. The 8 TB model also features 256 MB of cache, as opposed to 128 MB with the 5 TB and 6 TB models, and 64 MB with the 1 TB to 4 TB models. Idle power consumption weighs in at 7.6 W, but most drives will be operating constantly, which consumes 9 W. The drive also features 300,000 load/unload cycles, which is comparable to most NAS-class HDDs.
Perhaps the most important optimization resides in the firmware. Surveillance HDDs service multiple concurrent streams of large-block sequential data as it records footage to the drive. This is in stark contrast to the type of workloads experienced by every other type of HDD, so Seagate bakes in a custom firmware optimized to reduce frame loss during these multiple concurrent streams. Standard HDDs are prone to skipping and frame loss, but drives specifically designed for the correct workload provide exponentially better quality.
The 7th-generation Seagate Surveillance HDD supports up to 8 drives in a single chassis and includes strong rotational vibration countermeasures. The drives come with a 1 million hour MTBF, and Seagate also offers its optional 3-year data recovery service with the drive.
The 8 TB Surveillance HDDs will be available in November.
