With the rise of HD and AI-enabled surveillance, storage demands are scaling faster than ever. In this insightful conversation with Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal, Owais Mohammed, Director Sales, MEA & India, Western Digital, discusses how the company is innovating across capacity, performance, and cost-efficiency to meet the evolving needs of modern video surveillance. From the trusted WD Purple range to AI-ready solutions, Western Digital is powering intelligent, 24/7 surveillance infrastructures across diverse environments.
Rajeev: How is the storage industry responding to the explosive growth of surveillance video data in terms of capacity, performance, and cost-efficiency?
Owais: The global video surveillance storage market is experiencing steady growth, projected to expand from USD 9.5 billion in 2024 to USD 12.6 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 5.7%. This growth is primarily fuelled by the widespread deployment of high-definition (HD) and AI-enabled surveillance cameras that generate significantly higher and denser data volumes. In response, the storage industry is innovating across three key dimensions: capacity, performance, and cost-efficiency.
High-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) are essential to store the ever-increasing video footage, while fine-tuned performance for video streaming ensures uninterrupted video capture and smooth playback. At the same time, cost-efficiency remains critical, especially for mass deployments in cost-sensitive markets such as India.
Western Digital addresses these evolving needs with its popular WD Purple surveillance drives, which offer storage capacities up to 24TB in India. These drives are optimized for 24/7 operation, ensuring reliable, scalable, and affordable performance across surveillance infrastructures.
Rajeev: What innovations in storage technologies are enabling better management of continuous, high-volume surveillance data?
Owais: To effectively manage continuous multistreams of video, the storage industry is integrating advanced technologies that enhance both functionality and reliability. One notable innovation is the support for AI-enabled analytics within storage solutions, allowing real-time threat detection and smarter incident management by reducing false positives, for example. Celebrating 10 years in production,
Western Digital’s WD Purple drives incorporate proprietary AllFrame technology, which minimizes frame loss, improves video playback, and ensures better data integrity in smart video surveillance workloads. Additionally, modern surveillance-optimized drives are engineered to handle extremely high workload rates, up to 550 terabytes per year, making them suitable for the increasingly demanding data environments shaped by multi-camera, HD, and AI-driven surveillance systems.
Rajeev: Can you highlight any of your flagship storage product designed for 24/7 workloads?
Owais: Western Digital has developed a robust portfolio of storage solutions specifically for smart video surveillance applications that demand continuous, around-the-clock streaming performance. At the forefront is the WD Purple HDD range, which supports up to 64 HD camera streams simultaneously.
These drives are designed with AllFrame technology to reduce dropped frames and improve overall video quality. For more advanced surveillance environments that rely on AI-driven analytics and require higher endurance, Western Digital offers the WD Purple Pro HDDs. These drives are purpose-built for high-performance NVRs, video analytics servers, and AI-enabled recorders, supporting workloads up to 550TB per year. This makes them ideal for mission-critical surveillance setups in commercial and industrial contexts.
Rajeev: How do your products address challenges like data protection, redundancy, and RAID support in surveillance environments?
Owais: In surveillance systems, ensuring the security, reliability, and availability of video data is non-negotiable. Western Digital’s smart video surveillance-grade storage solutions are built with these imperatives in mind. They are fully compatible with RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) configurations, enabling data redundancy and minimizing the risk of data loss due to hardware failures.
In addition, tools like Western Digital Device Analytics (WDDA) provide proactive drive health monitoring by analyzing performance metrics and alerting users to potential issues before they lead to failure, allowing for preventive maintenance.
Furthermore, these drives are engineered with built-in vibration resistance, ensuring stable performance in multi-bay environments where physical disturbances could otherwise compromise data integrity or lead to system downtime.
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