Seagate Delivers Industry's First Purpose-Built 4TB Video HDD

[btarunr]

Seagate Technology today announced the new Seagate Video 3.5 HDD- the industry's first 4TB, 3.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) engineered specifically for use in video applications such as digital video recorders (DVRs), set-top boxes (STBs), and surveillance systems. Purpose-built for video solutions, the Video 3.5 HDD can store up to 480 hours of high-definition (HD) content making it the industry's highest-capacity drive designed specifically for video.

Engineered to deliver superior performance and operation in three key areas of importance to manufacturers- high capacity and streaming capability, reliability and acoustics- the Video 3.5 HDD is ideal for satellite and cable providers and surveillance system builders. Featuring capacities up to 4TB, the drive supports up to 16 simultaneous HD streams or 20 standard-definition streams as well as 24x7 operation capabilities making it ideal for video content applications.



"Leveraging Seagate's 10 years of experience understanding the requirements of the video market, we've combined our knowledge on heat, acoustics and power to deliver what we believe to be the most reliable DVR drive in the world," said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. "Our commitment to deliver a drive with unrivaled reliability ensures the safekeeping of consumers' content as well as keeping DVRs, STBs, and surveillance systems in the field longer."

Featuring industry-leading reliability, the Video 3.5 HDD has a 0.55 percent annual failure rate enabling product to be kept in the field longer while reducing the cost of field deployment and maintaining customer retention- making it ideal for manufacturers who need reliable product with long lifespans. The drive is engineered for low power consumption and heat emissions allowing solution providers greater design flexibility.

"We congratulate Seagate on its newest innovation," said Mark Jackson, president of EchoStar Technologies, one of the top DVR manufacturers for the satellite market in North America. "Seagate is a leader in the dedicated video HDD space, delivering top-of-the-line products that help us bring customers the most advanced and reliable DVRs in the industry."

The living-room environment requires superior acoustic management to limit audible distractions during operation of DVRs and STBs and the Video 3.5 HDD enables designers to build the quietest home entertainment systems possible. Boasting near silent acoustics, the drive operates below the range of audible sound for the human ear at just 2.3 decibels providing optimized acoustics for home entertainment components - crucial for consumer electronics and video applications.

For more information on the Seagate Video 3.5 HDD please visit this page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[pjl321]

Warranty?

Can't see what warranty they are giving with this?

Do they actually use different components when making the different drives and giving them the different lengths of warranty or is the difference in pricing purely the customer paying for that warranty?

It is a little worrying that all drive manufactures have opted to reduce their regular drive warranties down to just 1 year. Before the floods in Thailand the average warranty was 3 years and if i remember correctly Seagate was going to make 5 year warranty standard across all drives.

Why are they only offer 1 year warranty now? Are they using much less durable components?

 

[xaira]

really seagate...take a 4tb drive, change nothing and call it purpose built for video, as if anyone uses 4tb drives for a reason other than a video library, nooo theyre storing 4tb of music...well maybe except for audiophiles and their "lossless" and whats up with this 16 and 20 streams, its a 6g connection, the average sata drive will easily give you 150mB/s over that connection, thats only enough for 20 sd streams? the average sd stream is less than 1MB/s, i call bollocks

 

[DoomDoomDoom]

Sounds like marketing BS to me.

 

[cheesy999]

really seagate...take a 4tb drive, change nothing and call it purpose built for video, as if anyone uses 4tb drives for a reason other than a video library, nooo theyre storing 4tb of music...well maybe except for audiophiles and their "lossless" and whats up with this 16 and 20 streams, its a 6g connection, the average sata drive will easily give you 150mB/s over that connection, thats only enough for 20 sd streams? the average sd stream is less than 1MB/s, i call bollocks

Hard drives tend to exhibit a slower speed when multiple smaller files are written as opposed to singular large ones, i presume it's the drives write speed itself in this situation thats the limit here.

 

[ZetZet]

Hard drives tend to exhibit a slower speed when multiple smaller files are written as opposed to singular large ones, i presume it's the drives write speed itself in this situation thats the limit here.

Hard drives are slower when small files are transfered because writing head has to jump all over the place.

 

[RejZoR]

It depends how small files are positioned. If they are in rather sequential order it can be just as fast.

Though i for some reason prefer WD's duas stage R/W head which tends to be much quicker at random accesses...

 

[FordGT90Concept]

"Video" is a better name than "SV." Every time I saw "SV" at Newegg, I had to research WTF it meant.

I suspect the difference between these and normal Barracuda drives is in the firmware likely in how it caches data.

 

[RejZoR]

SV is usually surveillance, drives made for 24/7 operation. Usually.

 

[Jorge]

Now if you believe that this HDD is actually designed for video use, I have some prime ocean front property in AZ that you might be interested in...

 

[Aquinus]

if you believe that this HDD is actually designed optimized for video use

I fixed your sentence to make it true. The drive might not be designed specifically for video but as Ford said, it could be optimized with special firmware.

 

[cheesy999]

It depends how small files are positioned. If they are in rather sequential order it can be just as fast.

Though i for some reason prefer WD's duas stage R/W head which tends to be much quicker at random accesses...

This would be writing multiple continuous video continuously though, so if it's not writing them in different positions there's going to be really bad fragmentation.

 

[newtekie1]

I bought some of the 3TB models for the RAID array in my server, they works wonderfully. You can use them for standard desktop use too, they are just optimized for video storage and running 24/7.

Can't see what warranty they are giving with this?

Do they actually use different components when making the different drives and giving them the different lengths of warranty or is the difference in pricing purely the customer paying for that warranty?

It is a little worrying that all drive manufactures have opted to reduce their regular drive warranties down to just 1 year. Before the floods in Thailand the average warranty was 3 years and if i remember correctly Seagate was going to make 5 year warranty standard across all drives.

Why are they only offer 1 year warranty now? Are they using much less durable components?

Seagate gives a 3 year warranty on this line of drives. At least that is what my 3TB versions came with, I can't see them lowering it for the 4TB version.

 

[pjl321]

I bought some of the 3TB models for the RAID array in my server, they works wonderfully. You can use them for standard desktop use too, they are just optimized for video storage and running 24/7.



Seagate gives a 3 year warranty on this line of drives. At least that is what my 3TB versions came with, I can't see them lowering it for the 4TB version.

The point i was making is what is the difference between the '24/7' drivers and the cheaper standard drives apart from the price and warranty which to me seems like you are just paying for the warranty.

PS

All hard drivers work wonderfully until they suddenly fail and you feel like you have just been mugged so i hope its RAID-1 you have.

 

[newtekie1]

The point i was making is what is the difference between the '24/7' drivers and the cheaper standard drives apart from the price and warranty which to me seems like you are just paying for the warranty.

PS

All hard drivers work wonderfully until they suddenly fail and you feel like you have just been mugged so i hope its RAID-1 you have.

Yes, there is a difference. Besides the firmware optimizations, the quality of the components is better. The circuitry uses better components, better PCB, better ICs, etc.

And they are in RAID-5. I'd never run RAID-0 with anything important.

 

[danwat1234]

WD's piezoelectric wrist is awesome

It depends how small files are positioned. If they are in rather sequential order it can be just as fast.

Though i for some reason prefer WD's duas stage R/W head which tends to be much quicker at random accesses...

Yup WD's 2TB Caviar Black with dual stage piezoelectric wrist is still the quickest consumer 7200RPM drive with an average access time of around 11.8ms.

I think they don't use that piezoelectric technology in the 4TB model for some reason . I was looking forward to seeing it in a Scorpio Black 7200RPM laptop drive too.

5900RPM, that's fine for specific sequential and multi-sequential tasks but not for heavy duty work. I'm sure a regular Seagate green drive would work fine in a set top box.
A real hard drive is 7200RPM and if you want a supercharger, get a hybrid 7200RPM model with write caching. I hope they proliferate the desktop market so we can have 4TB+ 7200RPM hybrid desktop drives and I hope that Seagate continues making 7200RPM hybrid laptop drives, even though right now they're just making 5400RPM hybrid laptop drives (can be slow if data isn't cached, I'll never buy one).
Let me guess, this is a 5x800GB platter drive?

The 1 thing I'll give them is that it is rated for up to 70 Celsius operating temperature. Typically drives are rated at 60C. Also operating shock at 80g is a bit higher than average I think.

Their specifications page has bad data though;http://www.seagate.com/internal-har.../video-3-5-hdd/?cmpid=friendly-_-video-hdd-us
Says only 3 watts idle power consumption even on the 4TB model, but the datasheet http://www.seagate.com/files/www-co.../en-us/docs/video-3.5-hdd-ds1783-1-1302us.pdf
says 5 watts, which is far more realistic.
Also on the datasheet, a drive ready time of 15 seconds? Really? At 24watts of 12V power consumption it won't take long to spin up.
Some of the lower capacities says <17, or 6, or 12 seconds. Sounds like firmware bloat/excessive self testing before coming online if accurate, though I doubt those numbers are accurate at all.

24/7 operation; I don't buy into the marketing. I have my Scorpio Black 750GB drive running nearly 24/7 in my laptop for years now with zero issues. Besides, there are no 24/7 rated laptop drives. So who cares about that label. Just keep a backup handy as with all drives.