Video security hard disk drives: not all hard disk drives are the same

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Not all hard disk drives are the same. The drives used in video security and monitoring solutions need to support multiple simultaneous video streams, and continue to work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In this article, Jeff Briggs, General Manager Storage Products at Toshiba Electronics Europe, looks at how these security camera hard drives need to be optimized to make them suitable for use in video security.

Jeff Briggs, General Manager Storage Products, Toshiba Electronics Europe

The market for video security is booming. According to FutureSource, it may have grown by as much as 20% this year alone. We’ve also seen projections from Storage Newsletter which forecast the video security storage market to grow from $12 to $44 billion by 2033.

In part, this growth is being driven by a new generation of AIoT applications. These analyze video data to perform functions such as counting visitor numbers, identifying vehicle number plates or detecting the presence of smoke. But it’s not just the number of video cameras that is increasing; so, too is the resolution of the video streams that they are capturing.

All of this is creating a dramatic increase in the volume of video data that needs to be stored. There are also significant technical challenges that need to be overcome to produce round the clock reliability in very challenging conditions. The devices that are used to record this information—such as Hikvision’s range of security digital video recorders (DVRs) and network video recorders (NVRs)—are therefore equipped with special, highly robust, monitoring hard disk drives (HDDs) that have been optimized for security solutions.

How hard disk drives are optimized for video monitoring

Continuous operation

Unlike conventional desktop HDDs, which are designed to operate between 8 and 16 hours a day, video monitoring hard disk solutions operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That’s why their security hard drives are designed and built to be far more robust than normal. These special monitoring hard disk devices tend to feature a mean time to failure (MTTF) of 1 million hours, compared to 600,000 hours which is typical for desktop HDDs.

Large buffer memories to record multiple simultaneous video streams

Security camera hard drives need to record video streams coming from multiple different cameras simultaneously. That is why they feature on-board buffer memories which are typically much higher than standard desktop HDDs. Depending upon the resolution of the video streams, the video codec used, and the captured video content, the current limit per monitoring hard disk is 64 video feeds being processed simultaneously. Naturally, this figure is increasing all the time.

Vibration control for multiple drives

Given the large volumes of data involved in video monitoring, one drive is often not enough. In fact, the Hikvision range of video security systems support up to 8 security hard disks. Unfortunately, the rotational vibrations that can be caused with multiple DVR HDD or NVR HDD devices in close proximity to one another can reinforce each other and, in extreme cases, damage the drives. That’s why security HDDs intended for systems with 4 HDDs or more (such as Toshiba’s S300 Pro Models) have vibration sensors which detect and compensate the rotational vibration effects caused by other HDDs and fans.

Improved energy efficiency

Unlike enterprise HDDs which spin with rotational speeds in the region of 7,200 rpm, security disks can spin as low as 5,400 rpm. This is quieter and produces less heat. Importantly, this also consumes less power, making such HDDs more energy efficient.

Extended operating temperature range

Desktop HDDs are designed to work within standard ventilated office temperatures of between 0 and 60˚C. Sometimes, however, customers install their video recorders—particularly standalone DVRs—in poorly ventilated storage rooms or in production and storage areas where they may be exposed to elevated temperatures. That’s why security HDDs are designed to operate up to 70˚C. (In fact, Toshiba’s HDWV110UZSVA security hard drive used for video monitoring is rated to operate at temperatures up to 75˚C.)

Toshiba’s S300 and S300 Pro security hard drives

At a technical level, there is a very close working relationship between Hikvision’s security hardware and our security hard disk drives. The vibration control technology, for example, depends upon a collaboration between the operating system in the video recorder and the disks using information taken from their onboard vibration sensors.

To ensure that our HDD element of the solution is optimized for operation in Hikvision equipment, we have a technology lab based at our European headquarters in Germany. Here, we work with downstream partners such as Hikvision to ensure that our storage devices are fully tested and approved for compatibility and performance on the hardware that they will run on.

For Hikvision’s range of video recorders, the DVR HDD and NVR HDD devices that Toshiba supplies are our next generation S300 and S300 Pro. Using the latest technologies, these are designed to give customers a higher storage density with improved HDD performance. Because of the rapid evolution of AI-driven security applications, this family of Toshiba security camera hard drives is also being continuously updated, enabling them to keep pace with the demand for ever higher volumes of data from increasing numbers of cameras simultaneously.

Závěr

Hard disk drives may be the hidden components of video security systems, but they are, none the less, critical to their operation – every hour of every day. After all, if they fail, the entire system fails. Although these little 3.5” devices may not look any different from their more common desktop cousins, the differences within are subtle, yet profoundly significant. In the world of video security systems, at least, security hard disk drives are not all the same.

Jeff Briggs, General Manager for Distribution Sales EMEA, Storage Product Division at - Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH