Opinion: Seagate SKYHAWK CCTV Surveilance SATA 3.5" Hard Drive HDD

Any opinions on this: Seagate SKYHAWK CCTV Surveilance SATA 3.5" Hard
Drive HDD

For general purpose storage?

On 09/03/2020 19:43, Dan wrote:

For general purpose storage?

This one is the best:

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-gold-hdd

It's quite cheap and will last you forever. YOU DESERVE THE
BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go an buy it and talk about it for the rest of your life.

[ For a pumpkin ]
https://www.westerndigital.com/content/dam/western-digital/en-us/assets/products/internal-drives/wd-gold-hdd/product-hero-image-wd-gold-hdd-western-digital-main.png.thumb.1280.1280.png


--
With over 1.2 billion devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

In article , Dan
wrote:

Any opinions on this: Seagate SKYHAWK CCTV Surveilance SATA 3.5" Hard
Drive HDD

For general purpose storage?

surveillance drives are optimized for sequential writes, which is what
cameras need, versus normal everyday use, which is random read/write.

Dan wrote:

Any opinions on this: Seagate SKYHAWK CCTV Surveilance SATA 3.5" Hard
Drive HDD

For general purpose storage?

https://www.seagate.com/video-storage-calculator/

Notice the huge reduction in recommended storage capacity if you switch
from MPEG to H.264.

Also, do you have 24x7 video streams from 12 cameras? More likely
you'll only have 1 or 2 cameras, like for home surveillance, and only
need a week's retention.

So, just what are you surveilling? What's you video setup? How much
data are you going to pump through the HDD, and how long are you going
to archive it solely on the HDD? Do you actually have an NVR setup? Do
you even have a DVR setup? Think you'll notice the seek performance
gain of a 5900 RPM HDD versus a cheaper 5400 RPM drive? Buffers in the
OS will likely mask any gain. For the extra money, why not get a 7200
RPM HDD? Because of more power consumed for the higher RPM, make sure
there is good airflow over the 7200 RPM HDD.

On Mon, 09 Mar 2020 21:44:01 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Dan wrote:
Any opinions on this: Seagate SKYHAWK CCTV Surveilance SATA 3.5" Hard
Drive HDD

For general purpose storage?

It has all the same hardware as a regular drive, but the controller
is expecting a certain usage pattern, and the cache might be divided
or segmented to make the pattern work better for a PVR.

https://www.storagereview.com/review...dd-10tb-review

It still works as storage, and still works fine.

The drives come rated in work loads.

55TB/year desktop (lowest SKU)
180TB/year this particular drive
550TB/year enterprise drives
1100TB/year (the enterprise drives with dual heads are shipping!)

Even though at least some of them have an 8760 hours
per year "powered rating". It implies from a
warranty perspective, that writes wear the drive,
in some unspecified way.

They did make a change to drives some years ago, where
the read/write head had a thermal element, and on writes,
the head descends a tiny bit, to narrow the gap on a write.
Whether this has anything to do with the rating, who knows.

They also have head assemblies with piezo actuators, but for
some reason, didn't use a piezo method to drop the heads.

Also, at random, some drives park the heads when not being
used, and the drives are generally rated for 300,000 to
600,000 head park cycles. I bought two drives at a premium
price, expecting the heads to stay loaded, and they park
the heads. This is a "minus" rating for the drives I bought.

An Enterprise drive could keep the head loaded, but, you have
to read the reviews to *make sure* that is actually the case.
They seemed to be "diluting" some product lines, by mixing
****ty "lowest SKU" drives with intermediate SKUs. So that
the intermediate ones, you were paying more but not getting
more.

It's not always possible to get the TB/year rating. The advertising
currently, makes fun of the "lowest SKU", by making statements
about "how much better this SKU is than the lowest one".
Yet on the lowest SKU advertising page, they're careful
to make no mention at all of the TB/year thing.

SSDs have TBW ratings, which is a *total life* spec, as
SSDs have a defined wearout mechanism. Whereas on HDD,
the unit of measure is TB/year, and consequently, the
total amount of writes you can do, is better than
your typical consumer SSD rating (with TLC or QLC flash).

If you were asking "how can we as consumers rate what is
inside the can on these things", the answer is "we don't know".
We know there are danger signs, such as if a review suggests
a product uses SMR (shingled) storage versus the more
desirable PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording). Both
types store the bits vertically, like bottles of Coke,
but in the X-Y plane, the Shingled drives overlap the
shoulders of the tracks, such that there's no air gap
between them. The drive writes seven tracks in one long
continuous operation (there is an air gap between groups
of seven tracks). But, this also means you can't write
4KB randomly, without waiting for the entire seven tracks
to be re-written. It means for small OPs, the drive runs
RMW (read-modify-write) to suit the write strategy.

The cache DRAM on the drive has to work extra hard, to store up
stuff needing a write, and the write performance is "lumpy".
Even though they've made huge improvements since the
first SMR drive came out. They went from 25MB/sec SMR write
to maybe 180MB/sec, just by doing a better job with the cache.
On long transfers, you may find more than the expected amount
of slowdown. (Might run 180MB/sec for a while, then run slower.)
it's not clear whether they're cheating by putting 8GB of
SLC flash in there or something to make this apparent improvement.
This change was done to make possible "even cheaper drives".

As long as they're dishonest about drive construction, we don't
really know how to make intelligent buying decisions. They've
even stopped reporting how many platters are in there (because
the platter count is an admission of the presence of SMR.)

It's a calculated strategy to force "buying on FUD".

Anecdotally, I've heard that as a boot drive, a surveillance
drive is "a little slow". But, think about what group you're in.
Even with an SSD as a boot drive, Windows 10 is slow. You can use
your new Skyhawk for:

movie storage
storage of backup copies of your SSD boot drive

and then it's not going to matter how ****ty the drive is.

Even if you buy a small SSD, like 128GB SSD, the improvement using
that for Windows 10 boots, should be significant. Then, just
store your movies, on whatever rotating can of sludge you can find.
As consumers, this is our revenge.

Buy:

Small SSD as boot drive for Windows 10
(1) can of sludge for movie storage (put your movies on here immediately)
(1) can of sludge, making a backup copy of the movie storage drive

You're buying two cans of sludge, in the belief they're not
reliable, and they're cheap enough you buy two so you don't
lose your files. The backup drive has the emergency copy
of your files.

If the cans of sludge are parking the heads, who cares.

On the Skyhawk, the heads might not park, but, we don't know
that for a fact. The heads on a Skyhawk stay loaded because
we have 16 video cameras doing writes to the drive (in a PVR),
so the drive doesn't have much choice but to keep the heads loaded.
On a desktop, when the drive is idle, we don't really know
what might happen after ten minutes. I have to indulge in FUD,
because I have next to no solid facts to go on.

HTH,
Paul


Cheers. With a USB 3.0 case, use thiis drive for storage and another
one for general storage in my desktop.

Dan wrote:

Cheers. With a USB 3.0 case, use thiis drive for storage and another
one for general storage in my desktop.

I suggest that, because it's going to be too slow to be
used as the boot drive for Windows 10.

Before you buy, make sure the drive is a "512e". That's
4K sectors inside, with 512 byte emulated sectors visible
from the outside of the drive. That's a typical type for
home computer users. You can see in this document, it's
listed right on the title page.

https://www.seagate.com/www-content/...100818528b.pdf

I got that PDF from here.

https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/suppor...onics/skyhawk/

Types:

512n = 512 byte sectors inside, 512 byte sectors outside
The way drives used to be made.
Premium-priced today...
Example might be WDC Gold 1TB,2TB,4TB drives.
Best format for WinXP.

512e = 4K byte sectors inside, 512 byte emulated sectors outside
Most common modern configuration.

4Kn = 4K byte sectors inside, 4K byte sectors outside
*Not* for consumers. Pain in the ass (tool issues).

*******

This is a PDF file (the filename needs to be renamed and a
PDF extension put on the end). This is a summary list of
what Seagate makes. It mixes SSDs and HDDs together, making
it harder to compare what you're looking for. Start on page 5 or so,
with the Barracuda green ones.

https://branding.seagate.com/content...e-8270243d1361

Barracuda, Ironwolf, Skyhawk, Exos.

Paul

On Tue, 10 Mar 2020 05:47:51 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Dan wrote:

Cheers. With a USB 3.0 case, use thiis drive for storage and another
one for general storage in my desktop.

I suggest that, because it's going to be too slow to be
used as the boot drive for Windows 10.

Before you buy, make sure the drive is a "512e". That's
4K sectors inside, with 512 byte emulated sectors visible
from the outside of the drive. That's a typical type for
home computer users. You can see in this document, it's
listed right on the title page.

https://www.seagate.com/www-content/...100818528b.pdf

I got that PDF from here.

https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/suppor...onics/skyhawk/

Types:

512n = 512 byte sectors inside, 512 byte sectors outside
The way drives used to be made.
Premium-priced today...
Example might be WDC Gold 1TB,2TB,4TB drives.
Best format for WinXP.

512e = 4K byte sectors inside, 512 byte emulated sectors outside
Most common modern configuration.

4Kn = 4K byte sectors inside, 4K byte sectors outside
*Not* for consumers. Pain in the ass (tool issues).

*******

This is a PDF file (the filename needs to be renamed and a
PDF extension put on the end). This is a summary list of
what Seagate makes. It mixes SSDs and HDDs together, making
it harder to compare what you're looking for. Start on page 5 or so,
with the Barracuda green ones.

https://branding.seagate.com/content...e-8270243d1361

Barracuda, Ironwolf, Skyhawk, Exos.

Paul


OK, thanks. It looks good for storage via a USB 3.0 enclosure.