As video surveillance becomes more intelligent, data-heavy, and always-on, storage solutions must evolve to match. In this conversation, with Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal, Sameer Bhatia, Director – Asia Pacific Consumer Business Group and Country Manager for India & SAARC at Seagate, shares how the company is addressing the explosive growth of surveillance data with purpose-built technologies, hybrid architectures, and AI-optimized storage innovations.
Rajeev: How is the storage industry responding to the explosive growth of surveillance video data in terms of capacity, performance, and cost-efficiency?
Sameer: Smart city initiatives, advanced traffic management and the increasing need for safety across public and industrial sectors is indeed driving unprecedented data growth. With high-definition cameras, AI-powered analytics, and around-the-clock monitoring, calls for storage solutions that are scalable, durable and purpose-built for 24/7 data-heavy environments.
At Seagate, we recognize this surge in surveillance video data calls for storage solutions that deliver high capacity and consistent performance, while remaining secure and resilient in always-on, mission-critical settings. In scenarios where public safety is on the line, uninterrupted data capture, and the peace of mind that you will always be able to retrieve the data are non-negotiable.
Seagate’s SkyHawk series hard drives are designed specifically to meet these needs. With capacities of up to 24TB. SkyHawk drives are optimized for 24/7 video recording environment, handling intense workload with ease and reliability. For more advanced deployments, SkyHawk AI drives are built to handle both video and AI workloads simultaneously, supporting up to 64HD video streams and 32 AI streams, making them ideal for hybrid environments that demand real-time analytics alongside video capture.
To ensure consistent performance, each SkyHawk hard drive undergoes over 160 rigorous tests, including those for temperature, vibration and impact, ensuring they meet the physical demands of modern surveillance infrastructure.
Seagate SkyHawk hard drives are designed for durability and low power consumption and workload optimization, helping organizations reducing total cost of ownership over time. As AI becomes the new standard in surveillance systems, these capabilities are no longer optional but essential for supporting the next generation of high-capacity, intelligent surveillance environments.
Rajeev: What innovations in storage technologies are enabling better management of continuous, high-volume surveillance data?
Sameer: Innovation in storage technologies are playing a critical role in improving the management of continuous, high-volume surveillance data. Key advancements include:
High-capacity drives with advanced recording technologies
To keep up with the exponential growth of video data, hard drives are now offering significantly larger capacities through innovations in areal density – the amount of data stored per platter. Technologies such Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology allow drives to store up to 3.6TB per platter and beyond, significantly increasing total drive capacity. This allows organisations to manage growing volumes of data, reducing the need for frequent infrastructure expansion. Looking ahead, this cutting-edge technology is expected to support a wide range of applications, including increasingly complex surveillance workloads that require both scale and long-term reliability.
Storage solution built for AI workload
As real-time analytics and AI applications become integral to surveillance, storage is no longer just about holding data. SkyHawk AI is designed to handle simultaneous recording and AI workloads, supporting up to 64HD video streams and 32 AI streams. These drives enable on-the-fly video analysis at the edge, minimizing latency and bandwidth consumption while delivering faster incident response without compromising system performance.
Enhanced reliability through environmental resilience
Surveillance-specific drives must perform reliably in challenging, always-on environments. Modern drives are now rigorously tested for temperature extremes, vibration and shock. Features like Rotational Vibration (RV) sensors are optimized firmware maintain consistent performance in multi-drive systems, such as NVRs and RAID arrays, which are common in large-scale surveillance deployments.
Smart health monitoring and predictive maintenance
To reduce downtime and extend the lifespan of storage infrastructure, storage drives now include embedded features for reliability and predictive maintenance to continuously monitor drive performance and provide early detections for potential issues.
Rajeev: What are the emerging trends in hybrid storage architectures combining edge, on-premises, and cloud storage for surveillance applications?
Sameer: As surveillance infrastructure becomes more complex and data-intensive, hybrid storage architectures combining edge, on-premises, and cloud storage are increasingly adopted to meet demands for scalability, performance and cost-efficiency.
Several key trends are shaping this evolving landscape:
1. Intelligent data tiering. Surveillance workloads are leveraging tiered storage strategies that prioritize performance and cost optimization. High-resolution, frequently accessed footage is stored on local or edge storage for rapid retrieval, while older or less-critical data is offload to cost-effective cloud storage for long-term archiving.
2. Edge processing and AI enablement. With the rise of AI-driven analytics, processing at the edge is gaining importance. Edge devices, such as smart cameras and NVRs, now perform real-time analytics like motion detention, facial recognition, to reduce bandwidth usage and improve response times while feeding metadata and selective video to central or cloud systems for further analysis or storage.
3. Integrated predictive health monitoring. Modern hybrid storage architectures now embed predictive maintenance tools across all tiers of the storage infrastructure. These systems monitor drive health, system performance and environmental conditions to proactively flag issues and minimize downtime, ensuring system reliability in critical surveillance environments.
4. Enhanced cybersecurity and data sovereignty. As data flows between edge, on-prem and cloud environments, maintaining data privacy and compliance has become top priority. End-to-end encryption, zero-trust architectures and adherence to local data residency laws are increasingly embedded in hybrid systems, particularly for sensitive sectors like government, law enforcement and healthcare.
5. Cloud-native video management systems (VMS) with edge integration. Video management platforms are evolving into cloud-native systems that seamlessly integrate with edge and on-prem storage. These modern VMS solutions allow centralised control, remote monitoring and policy-driven storage routing, enabling intelligent data placement across storage layers based on usage, retention needs and analytics requirements.
Rajeev: Can you highlight any of your flagship storage products designed for 24/7 workloads?
Sameer: Seagate SkyHawk series hard drives are our flagship storage for video and analytics storage solutions. Specifically engineered to meet the demands of continuous video recording, Seagate SkyHawk series drives offer exceptional durability, consistent performance and reliable data integrity, making them an ideal choice for today’s demanding security and surveillance environments.
Seagate SkyHawk drives leverage advanced technologies tailored to modern surveillance infrastructure. With capacities of up to 8TB, supports for workloads up to 180TB per year and the ability of handle up to 64HD camera steams simultaneously, they are optimizing for large-scale, always-on environments. Integrated RV sensors and ImagePerfect™ firmware ensure smooth, uninterrupted video capture and high image fidelity, even in multi-bay NVR systems processing heavy data volumes.
With AI becomes integral to surveillance systems, Seagate SkyHawk AI drives offer specialized capabilities for concurrent video recording and AI-driven analytics. These drives support up to 64HD videos streams and 32 AI streams, with storage capacities of up to 24TB. Seagate SkyHawk AI includes features such as a top-cover-attached motor for vibration tolerance and built-in RV sensors for multi-drive environments. Engineered for high reliability, the drive offers enterprise-class workload rates of 550TB per year – over three times that of standard surveillance hard drives, and a mean time between failures (MBTF) of 2.5 million hours. These capabilities make SkyHawk AI an ideal solution for advanced, data-intensive, AI-enabled surveillance deployments.
All SkyHawk series drives undergo up to 160 rigorous tests to ensure reliability in demanding surveillance environments. They are compatible with major platforms and integrate seamlessly with AI-driven systems, DVRs, NVRs and edge devices, offering flexibility and ease of deployment across diverse setups.
In addition to performance, SkyHawk Health Management (SHM) which provides predictive drive monitoring and analytics to help detect potential failures before they occur. For added peace of mind, the drives include Rescue Data Recovery Services on top of product warranty to safeguard against unexpected data loss.
To support effective planning and deployment, Seagate offers Surveillance Storage Calculator, a smart tool that helps businesses and system integrators estimates storage needs based on camera resolution, number of cameras, retention periods, and video quality for setting.
Rajeev: How do your products address challenges like data protection, redundancy, and RAID support in surveillance environments?
Sameer: For enhanced data protection, the SkyHawk Health Management feature proactively safeguards surveillance storage by focusing on prevention, intervention and recovery. To further ensure peace of mind, SkyHawk drives include a 5-year limited product warranty along with 3 years of in-house Rescue Data Recovery Services, providing an additional layer of protection against data loss. This comprehensive support helps keep critical surveillance data secure, even in challenging situations such as system interruptions, accidental damage or unexpected power events. In the rare instance that recovery is needed, Seagate’s professional data recovery services offer a proven success rate of up to 90%, helping to restore valuable footage.
When it comes to redundancy, SkyHawk drives are optimized for multi-drive environments and support a wide range of RAID configurations. The SkyHawk Health Management also includes RAID Rapid Rebuild feature, which accelerates volume rebuild times by up to 3x compared to traditional RAID rebuilds methods, helping to maintain system uptime and data availability.
Together, these features ensure that Seagate SkyHawk drives effectively meet the demands of modern surveillance systems by delivering strong data protection, reliable redundancy and optimised RAID performance.
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