Seagate Skyhawk Surveillance ST2000VX008 2TB SATA3/SATA 6.0Gb/s 64MB Hard Drive (8.9cm ) | Computers & Accessories | Best Price Guarantee

I've installed Seagte Skyhawk 2TB in my DVR which has 9 wireless cctv cameras. I'm very impressed on the performance of Seagate Skyhawk. As a recommendation, it is important to factor in the quality of the hard drive and the wireless router to support the DVR. \n\nHighly recommended. Two thumbs up!!!\n\n Functionality:10/10\n Quality:10/10\n Material:10/10

CMR drive means it will work with ZFS and file servers, it has a similar life span to your average nas drive with far less cost, performs about as well as long as you get the CMR versions not the SMR versionsin answer to the other guys review, no they don't initialize internal disks from the factory, they never have(more than 30 years of buying drives here) because some people need a GPT format some need MBR (only usb externals get a default format)if you ever got an internal drive that was initialized congrats, you found a working return that then got sold to you as new :P

Performance:received the faulty 4TB hard disc unit.received the faulty 4TB hard disc unit. Communicated with seller, he ask us to send back and remind us not to click refund/return. we tought he will replace with new one once he received the faulty, but we still need to wait 2-3 weeks more for him to claim and get the new one from factory.This is very troublesome. This is not cheap2 price which need to wait 1 month to get the replacement unit. still got new stock 8 unit but still asked us to wait the claim unit.poor SOP process. Now we hv to wait 2-3 wks, hope it's not the faulty one which been repair or hope we will received the working one. if still happen still hv to wait another 3 wks.haihhhhh

Better than expected honestly.

Lets try something different, up until I had so many Seagate 3TB M001 drives die on me, I tried some WD 6TB reds, one got sent back twice, then finally died out of warranty recently, even have a 6TB Black that came DOA, so much for best of the best. Funny thing is i have several 3TB WD and Seagate NAS drives in an 8 drive RAID10 for well over 5 years now and have yet to have any problems. I am using this particular drive for backup purposes. I was pretty surprised how fast this drive is, 235MB writes and 245MB reads. Also for such a large format drive, its access times are pretty low all considering. It was nice to just plug it in and it just worked, very first power on it chirped(maybe something got knocked out of place during transportation?), but after that its ... MoreLets try something different, up until I had so many Seagate 3TB M001 drives die on me, I tried some WD 6TB reds, one got sent back twice, then finally died out of warranty recently, even have a 6TB Black that came DOA, so much for best of the best. Funny thing is i have several 3TB WD and Seagate NAS drives in an 8 drive RAID10 for well over 5 years now and have yet to have any problems. I am using this particular drive for backup purposes. I was pretty surprised how fast this drive is, 235MB writes and 245MB reads. Also for such a large format drive, its access times are pretty low all considering. It was nice to just plug it in and it just worked, very first power on it chirped(maybe something got knocked out of place during transportation?), but after that its been whisper quiet, almost had me scared there. After the run around with 6TB drives and its not only me, I am hoping the 8TB drives last longer, but honestly not being DOA is a great start for me, 2 of 3 WD 6TB drives came DOA, one was a RED and the other one a BLACK, but surprisingly on RED worked from the get go and has for almost 4 years from now, so who knows. Cross my fingers. But honestly this drive is faster and quieter than my WD Black 6TB and around the same price, with the exception of the 2 less years of warranty, its a pretty good deal.

Great drive, great price!

This Skyhawk hard drive from Seagate specifically targets the video surveillance user. Seagate’s new “Guardian Series” drives feature high MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), RVS (Rotational Vibration Sensors), huge amounts of cache, 7200 rpm spindle speed, and high workload ratings. The SkyHawk in particular also boasts enhanced ImagePerfect™ firmware. The series overall seems aimed at home or small business users who want huge, reliable storage, but aren’t necessarily setting up an enterprise level server. Pulling this bare drive out of its protective hot dog package, you realize it is something special. It’s got a heavy bulk to it that’s just different from other drives. It’s got your standard SATA and power connectors, along with the 4-pin jumper set that goes ... MoreThis Skyhawk hard drive from Seagate specifically targets the video surveillance user. Seagate’s new “Guardian Series” drives feature high MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), RVS (Rotational Vibration Sensors), huge amounts of cache, 7200 rpm spindle speed, and high workload ratings. The SkyHawk in particular also boasts enhanced ImagePerfect™ firmware. The series overall seems aimed at home or small business users who want huge, reliable storage, but aren’t necessarily setting up an enterprise level server. Pulling this bare drive out of its protective hot dog package, you realize it is something special. It’s got a heavy bulk to it that’s just different from other drives. It’s got your standard SATA and power connectors, along with the 4-pin jumper set that goes unused. Installing the drive was uneventful. I have tested this drive’s bigger brother (the 10 TB version) and for whatever reason it didn’t have all the proper mounting holes. This “little” guy does have them though so it’s all good. Seagate makes the claim that the drive is optimized for recording up to 90% of the time and supporting up to 64 HD cameras. With a Workload Rating of 180TB per year, and MTBF of 1,000,000 hours, the SkyHawk should certainly have no problem handling that. Though it’s clear that the drive is marketed at the home or small business user who will likely not even approach those numbers. If you’re a user big enough to have 64 cameras, you’d likely spend the extra 20% it takes to snag Seagate’s Enterprise level drive dubbed “Helium”. The ImagePerfect firmware is a caching mechanism allowing for quick spin up of the drive when it’s needed (e.g. when a camera detects motion and needs to instantly start recording). The RVS helps with interference if you have lots of spinning drives in the system. This SkyHawk ST3000VX010 was immediately slapped into a recently built Kaby Lake i5 system to help perform DVR / NVR duty. Recording over-the-air TV and several 3MP IP cameras, this drive didn’t miss a beat. The SkyHawk’s closest direct competitor would be the Western Digital Purple series, which, while comparatively priced, has half the cache and spins at 5400 rpm. Overall this new drive from Seagate fills a great need for many home users who are constantly needing more and more fast, localized storage.

Incredible Drive

The emergence of affordable HD video surveillance systems capable of supporting many cameras has created a demand for high-capacity, high-performance, affordable, and reliable storage. Many drives check off a few of these requirements, but after a week with the Seagate SkyHawk, I feel it checks all of the boxes and is the best mechanical drive I have come across in a long time. You know it is a premium drive as soon as you feel it in your hand. And with a three year warranty and 1M hours MTBF, Seagate knows it too. This drive is optimized for write-intensive operations, and Seagate claims support for 64 simultaneous HD cameras! While I can’t vouch for that many cameras, I can say that the six cameras I had connected to it recording real-time video had no issues ... MoreThe emergence of affordable HD video surveillance systems capable of supporting many cameras has created a demand for high-capacity, high-performance, affordable, and reliable storage. Many drives check off a few of these requirements, but after a week with the Seagate SkyHawk, I feel it checks all of the boxes and is the best mechanical drive I have come across in a long time. You know it is a premium drive as soon as you feel it in your hand. And with a three year warranty and 1M hours MTBF, Seagate knows it too. This drive is optimized for write-intensive operations, and Seagate claims support for 64 simultaneous HD cameras! While I can’t vouch for that many cameras, I can say that the six cameras I had connected to it recording real-time video had no issues whatsoever, and at various times I streamed a 1080p feed to my big screen at the same time, with absolutely no lag or buffering. This drive replaced two 4TB drives, allowing me to free up a bay and possibly add another 10TB drive in the future. At around $40/TB, pricing is on par with what I paid a year ago for the 4TB NAS drives I removed, but with much more cache and better performance optimization for the task at hand. The drive was immediately recognized by my BIOS and by Windows 10. I did a full format (not quick), which took approximately 16 hours. Sadly as others have mentioned, NTFS formatting ate .91TB of space, leaving 9.09 of usable space. Still, not too shabby. I am very pleased with this drive and feel it is currently the best drive for NVR/DVR duties. Time will tell how long it lasts, but the MTBF rating and warranty give me some peace of mind there. Overall I highly recommend this drive. Great job Seagate!

Review of Seagate SkyHawk 6TB Surveillance Hard Drive 3.5" 5400RPM 256MB Cache

Great quality drive + an improvement over the previous drive that was purchased from an alternative supplier.This drive replaces one that had been installed in an NVR, that had reached the end of its life.Seagate are a top tier supplier of Hdd's and I see no reason why this drive won't perform at the expected levelCan't comment on the reliability as it's only been installed for a few days.

Store All The Things

This behemoth hard drive from Seagate specifically targets the video surveillance user. Seagate’s new “Guardian Series” drives feature high MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), RVS (Rotational Vibration Sensors), huge amounts of cache, 7200 rpm spindle speed, and high workload ratings. The SkyHawk in particular also boasts enhanced ImagePerfect™ firmware. The series overall seems aimed at home or small business users who want huge, reliable storage, but aren’t necessarily setting up an enterprise level server. Pulling this bare drive out of its protective hot dog package, you realize it is something special. It’s got a heavy bulk to it that’s just different from other drives. It’s got your standard SATA and power connectors, along with the 4-pin jumper set that goes ... MoreThis behemoth hard drive from Seagate specifically targets the video surveillance user. Seagate’s new “Guardian Series” drives feature high MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), RVS (Rotational Vibration Sensors), huge amounts of cache, 7200 rpm spindle speed, and high workload ratings. The SkyHawk in particular also boasts enhanced ImagePerfect™ firmware. The series overall seems aimed at home or small business users who want huge, reliable storage, but aren’t necessarily setting up an enterprise level server. Pulling this bare drive out of its protective hot dog package, you realize it is something special. It’s got a heavy bulk to it that’s just different from other drives. It’s got your standard SATA and power connectors, along with the 4-pin jumper set that goes unused. Installing the drive was mostly uneventful, save for missing two of the middle-side mount holes usually found on a 3.5” form factor drive. C’mon Seagate, really? You’d think at this level one wouldn’t need to one-screw-wonder the thing. Seagate makes the claim that the drive is optimized for recording up to 90% of the time and supporting up to 64 HD cameras. With a Workload Rating of 180TB per year, and MTBF of 1,000,000 hours, the SkyHawk should certainly have no problem handling that. Though it’s clear that the drive is marketed at the home or small business user who will likely not even approach those numbers. If you’re a user big enough to have 64 cameras, you’d likely spend the extra 20% it takes to snag Seagate’s Enterprise level drive dubbed “Helium”. The ImagePerfect firmware is a caching mechanism allowing for quick spin up of the drive when it’s needed (e.g. when a camera detects motion and needs to instantly start recording). The RVS helps with interference if you have lots of spinning drives in the system. This SkyHawk ST10000VX0004 was immediately slapped into an aging but capable i7 920 system with 8GB of RAM which serves DVR/NVR duty. Recording over-the-air TV and several 3MP IP cameras, this drive didn’t miss a beat and obviously provided a massive increase in storage potential (Thanks, DVR, for letting me know a year’s worth of HD video recording is now available). With a 64K allocation size, NTFS formatted, GPT partition, the drive shows 9.09TB available in Windows 7 (that’s 9,957,049,892,864 bytes for you nerds that understand). Multiple real world file copy tests showed this drive averaging around 120 MBps. Pretty reasonable for a spinning drive with 10TB of space. The SkyHawk’s closest direct competitor would be the Western Digital Purple series, which, while comparatively priced, has half the cache and spins at 5400 rpm. Overall this new drive from Seagate fills a great need for many home users who are constantly needing more and more fast, localized storage. The only ding is the missing mounting holes and that wasn't worth losing an entire egg over.

Works Well in NVR and DVR

It's funny, when I look up reviews for surveillance hard drives, almost no one actually does real world field testing. Just benchmarks. Which never tell the whole story. I only have 12 cameras, Seagate claims this drive can handle up to 64 but that's partial nonsense since I was experiencing dropped frames and other typical issues with this drive when it was alone. I imagine Seagate is thinking if put into RAID. And really, almost every modern drive can handle 12+ cameras when put into RAID. I think this drive is worth buying over faster drives for DVR/NVR applications but is it absolutely better than, say, a NAS drive with a better warranty? Hard to say with real world results versus paper. This drive's firmware definitely helped with more consistency in a ... MoreIt's funny, when I look up reviews for surveillance hard drives, almost no one actually does real world field testing. Just benchmarks. Which never tell the whole story. I only have 12 cameras, Seagate claims this drive can handle up to 64 but that's partial nonsense since I was experiencing dropped frames and other typical issues with this drive when it was alone. I imagine Seagate is thinking if put into RAID. And really, almost every modern drive can handle 12+ cameras when put into RAID. I think this drive is worth buying over faster drives for DVR/NVR applications but is it absolutely better than, say, a NAS drive with a better warranty? Hard to say with real world results versus paper. This drive's firmware definitely helped with more consistency in a multi-camera setup and I did get fewer dropped frames, on average, but I'm still left wanting better performance in that area. A good drive with a bit over zealous marketing jargon that relies on technical benchmarks instead of real world conditions, I'd say. Fairly useless benchmark, but I'm including it in case people are going to use this drive outside of DVR/NVR applications, which I'd advise against doing since Seagate's other drives are similar in price and better suited, in raw numbers, at least: Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 189.403 MB/s Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 185.861 MB/s Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.101 MB/s [ 268.8 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.288 MB/s [ 314.5 IOPS] Sequential Read (T= 1) : 189.371 MB/s Sequential Write (T= 1) : 186.214 MB/s Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.519 MB/s [ 126.7 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.324 MB/s [ 323.2 IOPS]

Works great in it's intended use

I am using this in my Zmodo 4 Camera 960H DVR. It has been in use for about 3 weeks now, so no long term reliability information, but so far so good. This is kept in my unconditioned garage, temps range from 40°F to 95°F. I have 3 of the 4 cameras hooked up, 1 records 24/7, the other 2 are on motion activation. This drive is the 2 TB version, replacing a WD Green 2.5 TB drive that has been in it for about 2 years. First thing I noticed once the drives were swapped is it is almost silent now. Not that the WD green was loud or anything, just this Skyhawk drive is super quiet. I checked the temp of the case over the HDD with an IR thermometer, and with the WD green it would be about 10-15°F above ambient, the Skyhawk is 5-10°F above ambient, so it does run a little ... MoreI am using this in my Zmodo 4 Camera 960H DVR. It has been in use for about 3 weeks now, so no long term reliability information, but so far so good. This is kept in my unconditioned garage, temps range from 40°F to 95°F. I have 3 of the 4 cameras hooked up, 1 records 24/7, the other 2 are on motion activation. This drive is the 2 TB version, replacing a WD Green 2.5 TB drive that has been in it for about 2 years. First thing I noticed once the drives were swapped is it is almost silent now. Not that the WD green was loud or anything, just this Skyhawk drive is super quiet. I checked the temp of the case over the HDD with an IR thermometer, and with the WD green it would be about 10-15°F above ambient, the Skyhawk is 5-10°F above ambient, so it does run a little cooler. I do get a little less time from this drive than the WD Green, but it also has 500 gb less storage space, so it is to be expected. With my current camera setup, I should get 6-7 weeks of storage. As for playback quality, I don't really see much of a difference between this and what was in there before. Knowing I have a drive designed 24/7 recording is a nice thing though, I was always a little worried about using the Green drive for that. While this is designed for DVR/security cameras, it is a drive that can be used anywhere you need a HDD. I debated using it in my HTPC, but decided to use it in it's intended purpose. I did not run any transfer speed tests, I just stuck it in the Security system. I have read some sites state it is a 7200 rpm drive but have no idea if it really is.