Seagate SkyHawk 14TB hard drive review: Fast, surveillance-optimized storage - fierrobitherry

Seagate

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• 250MBps sustained transfer rates
• AI version carries a 5-year warranty
• Sensors help compensate for the vibe from opposite sticky drives in an set out

Cons

• Non as fast in our tests as the IronWolf
• Not more than cheaper than the Barracuda or IronWolf

Our Verdict

Though not as fast in our tests as Seagate's IronWolf Pro, the SkyHawk is still a selfsame smooth hard crusade, tuned for surveillance purposes. Seagate says it's optimized for use in NVRs. The AI version is further optimized to support streams containing frame recognition information.

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Ever in the pursuit of top performance, Seagate has recently released the $510 SkyHawk and announced the SkyHawk AI 14TB drives. These employ the same basic technology found on the the IronWolf, IronWolf Pro, Barracuda, and Barracuda In favor, but are optimized for heavy-duty surveillance work where septuple cameras (prepared to a humongous 64, though cast rates weren't mentioned) are streaming to the disk drive. The finish being to drop nary a frame. One would hope.

Contrive, specs, and AI

The SkyHawk is a 3.5-inch, SATA 3 (6Gbps) hard drive with eight spinning platters and the accompanying read-write heads. It uses parallel magnetic recording and sports 256MB of Drachm stash. The plain version is warrantied for three years of full 24/7 use, while the AI variation is guaranteed for five years.

Seagate

This Skyhawk is tk

Average ability draw during operation is 5 watts, and 3.4 watts when light. Rotational vibration sensors countenance the drive to compensate for the rumblings of busy 16 other drives in an array.

Seagate also touts something named ImagePerfect firmware. According to the press exit, it's a mult-tier/level caching technique tweaked for the average out NVR (Web Video Recorder) workload. Okay.

According to Seagate, ImagePerfect also supports larger cache sizes, merely the SkyHawk's 256MB capacity is the Sami as the IronWolf's and Barracuda In favor of's. There's also the fact that optimizing for video goes out the window when you put the SkyHawk into an array (RAID 0, Foray 5, etc.), where non altogether data is written to the same private road. Every bit a single aim, Beaver State mirrored array, you might see some benefit.

American Samoa mentioned, according to Seagate the casebook SkyHawk 14TB push back supports adequate 64 cameras (depending on the resolution of the video) while the AI interpretation additionally supports 8 AI channels (16 streams). AI streams contain information about pattern recognition performed on the video. As to Artificial Tidings… Simple pattern recognition of faces, automobiles, license plates, and what-have-you, which is what we're talking about, is non AI. AI just sounds sexier. View the '80's pic Short Circuit for the standard definition of Army Intelligence, Beaver State the mimicking in total of the human mind.

Performance

We do not have the setup to really stress a hard drive out with 64 cameras, so we cursed our usual methods: CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD (seek times and sustained throughput single), besides as 48GB real-world copy tests. In those, the SkyHawk tight tracks the performance of Seagate's Barracuda In favour of but falls slightly short of the company's IronWolf.

IDG

Though the IronWolf proved systematically the fastest of the Seagate 14TB drives, it's a marginal victory over the SkyHawk and Barracuda In favor of in free burning throughput.

The IronWolf is only a few MBps quicker than the SkyHawk according to CrystalDiskMark 6, though it maintains a agreeable two-percent reward crosswise all the throughput tests.

IDG

The differences in seek times between the Barracuda Pro 14TB and the SkyHawk were well within the margin of statistical error. The IronWof is easily faster than both at locating files.

Seek times too favored the IronWolf, but the SkyHawk finished in a statistical dead heat with the Barracuda Professional–well within the safety margin for the AS SSD tests.

IDG

There wasn't a plenty to prefer from between the ternion Seagate 14TB drives when copying files, though the more pricey IronWolf once again edged out its compatriots.

As you can get wind from the copy tests, the IronWolf, Pro Barracuda Pro, and SkyHawk are far more alike than different. Any of the three will work in well-nigh any usage scenario with presumptive only slim variations in performance.

As to those 64 cameras: If I were designing a surveillance system that Gordian, there would equal SSDs at the point of the spear, which likely as wel minimizes the impact of hard drive firmware optimized for video streams.

Conclusion

The SkyHawk is an excellent hard drive, and all things being other equal, the 14TB drive I'd likely put down in a single drive or mirrored NVR. But its siblings the IronWolf and the Barracuda, and for that matter, WD's Gold and Purple (other surveillance optimized drive in) are likewise great drives. Just saying.

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Jon is a Juilliard-trained player, erstwhile x86/6800 programmer, and long-time (late 70s) computer enthusiast living in the San Francisco embayment expanse. jjacobi@pcworld.com

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/403055/seagate-skyhawk-14tb-hard-drive-review.html

Posted by: fierrobitherry.blogspot.com

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