7 Reasons Why You Need a Special Storage for CCTV Use
CCTV surveillance is the need of the hour for several reasons. These range from preventing theft and monitoring vehicles to keeping a watch over your surroundings. But one thing people often struggle with is maintaining the storage for their CCTV use.
This article will tell you why you need to establish a surveillance HDD storage system in your home or office to make the most out of your CCTV usage. But before diving in, let’s understand what surveillance HDD is.
What are Surveillance HDDs?
Surveillance drives are storage drives specially designed for recording surveillance video on security systems round the clock. This means that they’ll continuously function for 24 hours a day while saving large amounts of security data from your CCTV camera. For this, they use NVR[M1] or DVR. NVR processes the data before storing it, while DVR processes data after sending it to the recorder for storage.
Top 7 Reasons Why You Need Surveillance HDD
Here's why you need to get a surveillance HDD for your CCTV usage.
- 24x7 storage
These drives are specifically designed to run all round the clock. Typical PCs are used for an average of 8 hours a day, limiting the storage capabilities of your CCTV surveillance to daytime only. Surveillance HDDs function 24x7, ensuring that the surveillance videos are consistently recorded all the time. In fact, these drives write data for around 70-90% of their runtime.
- Designed to run heavy workloads
Since they're meant for 24x7 storage purposes, surveillance HDDs are designed to keep heavy writing workloads in mind. They function on a 90-10 ratio– 90% of storing and 10% of reviewing and replaying data. As they largely focus on writing data, unlike PC drives that store, read, write and transfer data, surveillance HDDs have immense write performance.
- Consolidated footage
Searching for your desired footage among multiple drives sounds like a tedious task. Surveillance HDDs come with good storage capacity, which is often a couple of TBs more than your regular PC drive. This means that you can store all your CCTV footage in one place without having to worry about misplacing them. This also helps save the costs of purchasing different storage drives.
- Video Clarity
Due to their high write performance, surveillance HDDs store videos in very high quality. The loss of frames in the videos that are recorded is much less than PC drives, leading to clear-cut footage of 4K definition. Especially in cases like monitoring vehicles and their movements, this is extremely useful as you can read license plates, etc., clearly.
- Eco-friendly
Due to their low-power profiles, surveillance HDDs take up less power. This reduces their carbon footprint, which makes them environmentally friendly. Apart from this, low-power profiles dissipate less heat, providing cool operating temperatures. Even while working 24x7x365, they can function smoothly without breaking down.
- Resists harsh weather
As we've already mentioned, surveillance HDDs are specifically designed for storing CCTV data. This means that they're engineered to survive under multiple temperatures and weather conditions. They can also record video footage from multiple cameras and channels while meeting optimal operational demands, making them far more reliable than PC drives.
- Built for longevity
You no longer need to worry about your PC or hard drive breaking down; your surveillance HDD has got you covered. These storage systems are built for longevity, thereby allowing them to function independently without having to rely on other systems.
Factors to Consider before Buying Storage for CCTV Use
- Storage Capacity
Do you want to buy tons of drives or find all your footage at one spot? Picking your storage option also depends on the number of cameras you’ll be using. If you want to find out how many cameras you will need, Western Digital’s Storage Capacity Calculator is a helpful tool. - Power consumption
This is crucial because the amount of power your storage drive consumes, and the cooling system will help determine the longevity of your storage. It's also better to be sustainable. - Durability
Will your storage survive harsh weather? Can it sustain in low-power or high-temperature conditions?
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is safe to say that Surveillance HDDs are among the best options for storing the footage of your CCTV records. We highly recommend that you check them out for your CCTV use.