Is Your Hard Disk Drive Optimised For CCTV Recording?

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Once the fearsome tool of a totalitarian state in George Orwell’s iconic novel – 1984, CCTV surveillance is not only ubiquitous, it is even considered essential. Forget Big Brother. Many modern homes and offices have CCTV systems for safety and security reasons.

The most common video surveillance systems are dedicated CCTV (closed-circuit television) systems. They combine video cameras with a display and a digital video recorder (DVR). Whether they are using good old analog video cameras, or the newer high-definition digital video cameras, all those video streams are written into hard disk drives.

 

Not Optimised For CCTV Recording

For many years, CCTV systems were built around hard disk drives used by desktop computers. While this worked, it was not an ideal situation because these desktop hard disk drives are :

  • NOT designed to withstand the harsher conditions inside a DVR.
  • NOT engineered to run 24/7 in an always-on condition
  • NOT optimised for the recording of multiple video streams

As a result, these desktop hard disk drives have a tendency to fail earlier. This not only means lost video surveillance footage, it also means a higher cost of ownership because these drives have to be replaced more frequently.

Is Your Hard Disk Drive Optimised For CCTV Recording?

Even when they are working properly, the recorded video streams may suffer from quality problems like dropped frames or whole gaps in the video stream. After all, desktop hard disk drives lack support for ATA streaming that give proper surveillance hard disk drives the ability to record multiple video streams simultaneously.

 

Surveillance Hard Disk Drives

As we upgrade to high-definition digital video cameras, the quality problems with desktop-grade hard disk drives become more apparent. They drop even more frames because they are unable to keep up with the constant flow of high bit-rate video streams.

This negates the purpose of upgrading to high-definition cameras. What’s the point of recording high-resolution video if it means whole gaps in the video?

WD Purple - Is Your Hard Disk Drive Optimised For CCTV Recording?

To counter that problem, as well as improve reliability in the high-temperature, always-on environment of the DVR, surveillance hard disk drives were developed. What do these drives offer?

  1. The ability to withstand the extreme heat fluctuations and vibration common in DVR enclosures.
  2. The ability to record the incoming video streams 24/7, without rest.
  3. The ability to record multiple video streams without dropped frames, or gaps in recorded footage.

 

WD Purple Surveillance Hard Disk Drives

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The WD Purple family of surveillance hard disk drives were unveiled in February 2014. Since then, Western Digital has steadily added new models to the family. They now offer WD Purple hard disk drives in capacities from as low as 500 GB all the way to 8 TB.

WD Purple - Is Your Hard Disk Drive Optimised For CCTV Recording?

All WD Purple drives boast these key features :

  • Engineered specifically to handle the workload of always-on, 24/7 surveillance security systems
  • Performance prioritised for write operations to minimise dropped frames.
  • Toughened to withstand the high-temperature and vibration of a DVR
  • WD AllFrame technology improves ATA streaming to reduce frame loss, improve overall video playback and increase the number of drives supported by a single DVR
  • WD IntelliSeek technology keeps power consumption, noise level and vibration low
  • Three year limited warranty for peace of mind

Surveillance hard disk drives like the WD Purple drives are an essential component of the triad of reliable CCTV systems – high-quality cameras, reliable power supply and trustworthy storage. Make sure your CCTV system uses proper surveillance hard disk drives.

WD Purple drives are currently available at all computer retailers nationwide. For more information, check out the official WD Purple product page.

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Disclosure

This post was sponsored by Western Digital.

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