Seagate: SkyHawkTM. The Smart Surveillance Storage Solution
CCTV and video surveillance represent the largest security technology segment. With crime detection and prevention roots stretching back 70 years, the industry has seen the development from black and white images on physical film to the latest IP cameras with fully centralised cloud storage. And as technological advancements in video surveillance show no signs of slowing down, applications will continue to develop in the public, private and home sectors.
Although there is an indisputable element of distrust felt towards video surveillance technology, with many of us feeling under almost constant observation, the value surveillance adds to crowd management, traffic control, transport operations and criminal detection is less controversial – its primary focus is, after all, protecting people and property.
The real-time monitoring and detection of undesirable behaviour is a well-understood benefit of video surveillance – but the real value lies in your ability to store, retrieve, watch and analyse large quantities of data. Whether it’s spotting previously-missed criminal activity, gaining new insight into how your customers use your premises, or identifying more efficient ways of working, the benefits are undeniable… but keeping more footage for longer does require significant storage capacity.
Among the various criteria that determine the success or failure of a DVR or NVR system implementation, storage capacity and reliability is often one of the most critical – and one of the most overlooked, with businesses often choosing between storage costs, video quality, or retention times.
Today’s camera manufacturers pride themselves on being able to offer a number of features, including:
- Higher image resolution
- More frames per second
- More active cameras per system
- Longer archival periods
- Intelligent video recognition
But while ample storage capacity is a key enabler of these types of capability, it’s often where video surveillance deployments run into difficulties; when trying to meet storage requirements, multiple lower-cost, lower-capacity HDDs are repeatedly used in a bid to save money.
Unfortunately, because of the fundamental differences in workload requirements, it’s never been enough to trust your surveillance data to a regular desktop HDD – that’s why we’ve worked tirelessly over the past decade to develop our purpose-built surveillance drive. Now on our seventh generation surveillance-specific HDD, Seagate SkyHawkTM incorporates ImagePerfectTM firmware built on Multi-Tier Caching (MTC) Technology. The algorithm allows for vast quantities of footage to be stored without pixilation, whilst the MTC Technology actively reduces data errors and prevents critical frame loss during multiple stream recordings – well outside the specs of your average desktop HDD.
Furthermore, we recognise that TCO extends far beyond your initial installation costs – you need to know you’re making a long-term investment that will continue to deliver on performance, whilst needing minimal maintenance. By increasing its workload rating to 3x that of a desktop drive and enabling it to support up to 64 HD cameras at once, our SkyHawkTM HDD keeps your surveillance system in the field longer and reduces the need for post-deployment support.
We also understand you’ll need to access your data without interrupting the write performance: ImagePerfectTM firmware supports 24/7 surveillance-optimised workloads, tuned to record 90% of the time and play back video footage the remaining 10%, resulting in a drive that’s both reliable and efficient.
Don’t be intimidated by the price of a high-end surveillance service. There is much to be gained from using the latest technology – particularly when both hardware and software have been tailor-made to meet your needs. From improved security to invaluable customer insights, a well-designed surveillance system has a lot to offer.
Available up to 10TB, SkyHawkTM surveillance HDD addresses not only your capacity needs but also delivers perfect vision and seamless access to data. Now that is smart.
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