Seagate Unveils 750GB Hard Drive Designed Specifically for the Digital Video Security Market

Concerns about terrorism and crime across countries have forced citizens and governments around the world to make public safety and security a top priority and invest in it accordingly. Another major market are retail business establishments which are increasingly relying on security systems to help them manage their businesses. Video security and surveillance technology is in a rapid shift from legacy tape based systems to digital systems employing hard drive storage. IMS Research indicates the worldwide estimate for video surveillance equipment was 4.2B in 2004 with a CAGR of 14% by 2009.

Digital video security systems now enable sophisticated software capabilities to automatically preview and flag security events in seconds, where manually reviewed images would have taken days or even months to locate similar information. High resolution image capture is moving the quality of stored video from grainy and marginally useful to crisp and incredibly detailed images used to capture criminals, save lives and improve business practices in a wide variety of industries. At the heart of these capabilities are massive and reliable hard drives, enabling the storage of incredible amounts of digital video data while also providing unprecedented fast access and review of recorded video not possible on legacy tape based systems.

Seagate remains the only hard drive manufacturer dedicated to the security and surveillance market with a hard drive built to specifically withstand the surveillance digital video recorder (SDVR) environment. Seagate's SV35.2 Series hard drives leveraging its perpendicular recording technology offer increased capacity, while continuing to improve performance, power management and reliability in SDVRs. And as a distinct product family, the SV35.2 Series is poised to develop new features and functionality independent of other market segments, increasing its capabilities in meeting the unique needs of video security and surveillance customers in the future. The SV35.2 Series hard drives have improved video recording performance characteristics over traditional desktop drives while also offering increased reliability features required in digital video surveillance applications.

Analysts predict that the convergence of access control technologies with other security systems, like biometric and Video surveillance equipment, are likely to enhance the demand over time.

"Our goal is to give the security industry another tool to help its mission in protecting the world," said Mitch Rose, sr. director Product Line Management, Seagate. "Our latest addition to the SV35 family will make security systems more reliable, better performing, and deliver more capacity. The critical nature of these applications and systems dictates a hard drive made specifically for security, and Seagate is the only company to have addressed the unique needs of surveillance video system manufacturers and integrators."

Digital video recording systems for surveillance are often designed to include multiple hard drives to store the massive amounts of information collected. This can result in difficult power management challenges both at system start time as well as during operation. The Seagate SV35.2 Series hard drive provides a low start-up current (~2.0A) that enables the use of efficient, low cost power supplies. In addition, the SV35.2 Series enables real-time power-saving modes when not in active use. This allows for much more efficient system cooling, which in turn can dramatically improve overall system reliability.

The Seagate SV35.2 Series hard drives will begin shipping in October 2006.

Source: Seagate Technology