Seagate SkyHawk 6TB Surveillance HDD SATA 6Gb/s 3.5in

The Seagate SkyHawk 6TB Surveillance HDD SATA 6Gb/s 3.5in (ST6000VX008) is a hard disk drive for CCTV recorders. It stores the footage your cameras produce, day and night.

What each spec means in use

• 6TB capacity: six terabytes of space for recorded video. How many days that covers depends on your camera count, resolution and bitrate.
• 3.5in SATA 6Gb/s: SATA (Serial ATA) is the connection type and 6Gb/s is its link speed. It suits recorder bays built for 3.5-inch SATA drives.
• 256MB cache: on-drive memory used as a buffer.
• Up to 180MB/s sustained transfer rate: the top steady data rate, relevant when several camera streams record at once.
• 24×7 operation, 8,760 power-on hours a year: that is every hour of a 365-day year, so the drive is rated to stay powered continuously.
• 180TB/year workload rate limit: the yearly volume of data the drive is rated to handle in always-on recording.
• Designed for a workload of up to 64 HD cameras, which indicates the recording load it can handle.
• Rated at 1,000,000 hours MTBF (mean time between failures), indicating its reliability.

It also has tarnish-resistant components.

What else you need

A DVR (digital video recorder) or NVR (network video recorder) with 3.5in SATA bays. Check the recorder maker's supported drive list and per-bay capacity limit before you buy. The 64-camera figure describes the drive's design, so your recorder's own channel count still sets how many cameras you can connect.

This is a surveillance drive for recorders, not for desktop PC use.