Use "surveillance HD" for EyeTV Storage?

[tys]

Hi,
I use an EyeTV unit on my Mac to record and watch shows using an OTA antenna. I have an external drive where I store the video. I also use a partition on that drive for my time machine backups. Time to upgrade the drive.
My search turned up "surveillance hard drives" which seem to be designed for constant use video recording. Since I record a couple hours of video almost every day, this seems like the ideal drive. Is there any reason NOT to use this type of drive in my situation?
Thanks!

 

[satcomer]

Hi,
I use an EyeTV unit on my Mac to record and watch shows using an OTA antenna. I have an external drive where I store the video. I also use a partition on that drive for my time machine backups. Time to upgrade the drive.
My search turned up "surveillance hard drives" which seem to be designed for constant use video recording. Since I record a couple hours of video almost every day, this seems like the ideal drive. Is there any reason NOT to use this type of drive in my situation?
Thanks!

You need something like a Synology NAS line the five bay DS1815+. You will be able to backup much more than just videos. You could backup all your gigital life and have access to it from all around the world

 

[tys]

You need something like a Synology NAS line the five bay DS1815+. You will be able to backup much more than just videos. You could backup all your gigital life and have access to it from all around the world

Thanks for the reply, but that's a bit over my head and seems like overkill for my purposes. Are you saying that a surveillance type drive will ONLY work with a fancy setup like that?
I'm perfectly happy with my current setup and HD enclosure, just looking to upgrade the drive. Currently using a run of the mill 3.5" HDD and wondering if a surveillance drive would be a better option. It seems like they're more robust and would have a longer lifespan, as long as there are no downsides.
It will just be used for video recording and playback (like a DVR) and for nightly Time Machine backups. I'll be using a direct connection to my Mac via FireWire, no network access needed.

FYI: I'm looking at this drive:
http://www.seagate.com/products/media-video-storage/surveillance-drives/surveillance-hdd/

Or maybe this: (but it's not currently in stock)
http://www.seagate.com/products/media-video-storage/surveillance-drives/video-3-5-hdd/

 

[matreya]

Just get a Toshiba hard drive. The 4TB X300 drives are excellent and have 1.4 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) so they're designed to last.

They also come in 5 and 6TB models if you need the room. I bought mine (4 x 4TB) from Amazon.

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B013JPKUU2/

 

[cube]

The Toshiba 3.5" drives are or descend from Hitachi, which descend from IBM, so I have good hopes for them. To accept the acquisition of HGST by WD, the Chinese antitrust regulator demanded that a consumer 3.5" product line was sold to Toshiba (who had no 3.5" products) in exchange for a 2.5" plant, so that three 3.5" manufacturers would remain.

 

[tys]

Just get a Toshiba hard drive. The 4TB X300 drives are excellent and have 1.4 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) so they're designed to last.

They also come in 5 and 6TB models if you need the room. I bought mine (4 x 4TB) from Amazon.

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B013JPKUU2/

1,400,000 hours? So about 160 years, I guess that'll do ;-)
Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[cube]

1,400,000 hours? So about 160 years, I guess that'll do ;-)
Thanks for the suggestion.

It does not mean a drive will last that long on average. They put a bunch of drives to run until one fails, and they multiply the number of drives by how long they ran. That's why manufacturers are moving to publish some different measure.

 

[tys]

It does not mean a drive will last that long on average. They put a bunch of drives to run until one fails, and they multiply the number of drives by how long they ran. That's why manufacturers are moving to publish some different measure.

What?! You mean they didn't start testing them back in 1846?

 

[cube]

What?! You mean they didn't start testing them back in 1846?

I was not sure if you were joking or understandably confused.

 

[hfg]

Hi,
I use an EyeTV unit on my Mac to record and watch shows using an OTA antenna. I have an external drive where I store the video. I also use a partition on that drive for my time machine backups. Time to upgrade the drive.
My search turned up "surveillance hard drives" which seem to be designed for constant use video recording. Since I record a couple hours of video almost every day, this seems like the ideal drive. Is there any reason NOT to use this type of drive in my situation?
Thanks!

As I recall from earlier DVR days ... "video" or "surveillance" hard drives differ from data drives in the manner they handle error recovery. Since a "bad" data read in video will only result in a streak or spec-flash on the display, they ignore the error and continue on to avoid a complete loss of the continuous video stream. This would be unacceptable on a data drive which would retry the read operation multiple times to attempt to recover the important data exactly as written.

If you want to use the same drive for data backup, I would use a data drive for security.

 

[garysauctions]

Just get a Toshiba hard drive. The 4TB X300 drives are excellent and have 1.4 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) so they're designed to last.

They also come in 5 and 6TB models if you need the room. I bought mine (4 x 4TB) from Amazon.

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B013JPKUU2/

We've been using Hitachi Ultrastar enterprise drives with great success.

They have a much better MTBF .... 2.0 Million Hours.

Micro Center has refurbished 2 TB units on sale for $45.

Now from Hitachi the warranty is only 30 days, however for $5 per drive Micro Center will sell you a 2 Year Replacement plan.

For recording of TV shows, buy two of them and set them up in mirrored config, if you are concerned about failure and loss of a TV show.