INTRODUCTION

   Usually whenever the subject of high/large storage capacity needs comes up with friends and colleagues it either has to do with work (mostly local and cloud backups), media collections and game installations. Still there are many reasons one may be in need of a high-capacity drive and one of those is video surveillance. Now although many years ago video recorders used VHS tapes which were later on replaced with laser discs and finally DVDs to record surveillance data today all NVR's (network video recorders) do so on disk drives. The obvious reasons for using disk drives are not just the amount of data (time) that can be stored but also the number of streams/feeds that can be recorded simultenously. Seagate has supported NVR owners (and companies) for roughly 10 years now with their Surveillance HDD models but they somewhat recently started offering the updated Skyhawk line of HDDs designed specifically for DVR/NVR use and today we have the 10TB variant with us.

   Founded in 1979, Seagate is the leading provider of hard drives and storage solutions. From the videos, music and documents we share with friends and family on social networks, to servers that form the backbone of enterprise data centers and cloud-based computing, to desktop and notebook computers that fuel our personal productivity, Seagate products help more people store, share and protect their valuable digital content. Seagate offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of hard disk drives, solid-state drives and solid-state hybrid drives. In addition, the company offers an extensive line of retail storage products for consumers and small businesses, along with data-recovery services for any brand of hard drive and digital media type. Seagate employs more than 50,000 people around the world.

   Just like the Barracuda Pro and IronWolf/Pro lines the Skyhawk line of 3.5" hard disk drives by Seagate is part of their new Guardian series and currently includes models in 1/2/3/4/6/8/10TB capacities (4/6/8/10TB models support health management) which according to Seagate are optimized for use in digital and network video recorders (DVR/NVR) connected with up to 64 HD cameras. Just like the Barracuda Pro and IronWolf/Pro drives the Skyhawk is also a helium filled drive based on perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) that features a total of 7 platters (1.5TB in capacity each) that spin at 7200RPM along with a total of 256MB DRAM cache (1/2/3/4TB models only have 64MB). The Skyhawk line of HDDs also features Seagate's DVR/NVR tailored ImagePerfect firmware and ATA streaming support for seamless footage capture even from a total of 64 HD cameras, PowerChoice technology for reduced power consumption and Health Management which informs the user of imminent drive failure thus actively protecting your surveillance storage. Finally Seagate covers the Skyhawk 10TB hard disk drive with a 3 year limited warranty and rates it for a workload of up to 180TB per year and an MTBF (mean time between failures) of 1 million hours.