CCTV_Suppliers 0 Posted September 16, 2007 Just was wandering which type of hard drives anyone uses when building or upgrading DVRs?? According to had drive manufacturers, average use of the Commercial version of hard drives should not be more than 8-10 hours per day... Whereas, the surveillance version hard drives gives you 24/7 use without any issues... Just interested to find out your comments about this newer technology (it has been out for at least a year now, even though most DVR manufacturers refuse to use them)... Lets keep urls about this technology out, rather opinions on uses, any pros or cons in general. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
scorpion 0 Posted September 16, 2007 I use W/D Caviar Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CCTV_Suppliers 0 Posted September 16, 2007 I use W/D Caviar Which model? Do you know if they are commercial or surveillance versions? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rory 0 Posted September 16, 2007 been running consumer based 24/7 without any problems. Actually never had a hard drive failure. Disclaimer: I Dont build hundreds of DVRs though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
scorpion 0 Posted September 16, 2007 I would have to go back to the shop, and yank one out, or find the paper work. To qualify our work, we install very low end residential DVRs, and Systems. For what I pay for a 250 GB hard drive it is just cheaper to replace it two years down the road, out of pocket, (or should it fail prematurely). I use what is requested out of the manufactures specs for DVR. W/D Cavier model number that is listed is what I use. I am torn between buying HD on my own, or letting the distrubutor install the hard drive. What if the hard drive fails, and damages the DVR? Now what do I do? One distributor charges through the nose for HDs! It is not even worth getting a preinstalled HD from this Texas distributor. My Miami distributor's HD price is very reasonable, and it is worth them to install the HD. Should something ever happen, then the DVR/HD is cover under warranty. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rory 0 Posted September 16, 2007 I would have to go back to the shop, and yank one out, or find the paper work. To qualify our work, we install very low end residential DVRs, and Systems. For what I pay for a 250 GB hard drive it is just cheaper to replace it two years down the road, out of pocket, (or should it fail prematurely). I use what is requested out of the manufactures specs for DVR. W/D Cavier model number that is listed is what I use. I am torn between buying HD on my own, or letting the distrubutor install the hard drive. What if the hard drive fails, and damages the DVR? Now what do I do? One distributor charges through the nose for HDs! It is not even worth getting a preinstalled HD from this Texas distributor. My Miami distributor's HD price is very reasonable, and it is worth them to install the HD. Should something ever happen, then the DVR/HD is cover under warranty. If its 250GB and up, should be the SE16 series, thats what I use, $100 for a 500GB, cant beat it. Tried a couple Raptors the other day, was not impressed. Use a Voltage Regulator and you should not have any issues. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CCTV_Suppliers 0 Posted September 17, 2007 I would have to go back to the shop, and yank one out, or find the paper work. To qualify our work, we install very low end residential DVRs, and Systems. For what I pay for a 250 GB hard drive it is just cheaper to replace it two years down the road, out of pocket, (or should it fail prematurely). I use what is requested out of the manufactures specs for DVR. W/D Cavier model number that is listed is what I use. I am torn between buying HD on my own, or letting the distrubutor install the hard drive. What if the hard drive fails, and damages the DVR? Now what do I do? One distributor charges through the nose for HDs! It is not even worth getting a preinstalled HD from this Texas distributor. My Miami distributor's HD price is very reasonable, and it is worth them to install the HD. Should something ever happen, then the DVR/HD is cover under warranty. We used WD drives... not really impressed with the performance as they run hotter than Seagate version.. When we found out about the "surveillance version" of the same size drives, I was very hesitent to consider them.. but we run some very hard drive intensive tests in-house and guess what... the commercial version did fail (thanks god that it fail in-house rather than at customer's site), however the surveillance version were just kept on crunching numbers.. these tests were done in a period of month.. After seeing the actual results, it made sense to go with these "surveillance" versions... What we found out however is that not every distributor for hard drives actually tell the truth... the actual pricing for commercial and surveillance hard drives were the same and in some instances (when buying higher quantities) pricing was lower... It was a very simple decision from our part to go with these newer breed drives and it was not based on manufacturers marketing hype, rather very agressive in-house tests.... If you guys want, I can get you these part numbers and you can use them in your own new builds or upgrades of DVRs... Let me know. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rory 0 Posted September 17, 2007 I used Seagates originally but had more problems with them after a while, basically everyone that i received came bad .. so switched to WD, though a couple of them have also come bad, but more good than bad; all this due to shipping and also being OEM drives they are never packaged properly anyway, I have found it always best to buy direct from the manufacturer so its packaged individually and proper even though it means higher price; as the distributors and retailers just ship it in the same box as the other gear without any additional packaging besides the anti-static bag, and that box gets kicked around alot. When i say bad, not necessarily damaged so it wont work, but definitely slower and much noisier. Personally I cant stand a noisy drive. Also, in the case of needing a replacement, WD drives are the most common here, so its best for us to stick with them for that reason also, if only to use the same drives all around. Anyway, as for WD drives, they have the Enterprise Drives, they are about the same cost ($10 more for the 500GB), but they are not as easy to find as the desktop drives (meaning hardly ever in stock), so I dont even bother looking anymore. Here is the link to the Enterprise Drives from WD: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=331&language=en Also, when you get a bad hard drive here, you cant send it back as that would cost more than just going to the store and buying a new one at local pricing. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CCTV_Suppliers 0 Posted September 17, 2007 I used Seagates originally but had more problems with them after a while, basically everyone that i received came bad .. so switched to WD, though a couple of them have also come bad, but more good than bad; all this due to shipping and also being OEM drives they are never packaged properly anyway, I have found it always best to buy direct from the manufacturer so its packaged individually and proper even though it means higher price; as the distributors and retailers just ship it in the same box as the other gear without any additional packaging besides the anti-static bag, and that box gets kicked around alot. When i say bad, not necessarily damaged so it wont work, but definitely slower and much noisier. Personally I cant stand a noisy drive. Also, in the case of needing a replacement, WD drives are the most common here, so its best for us to stick with them for that reason also, if only to use the same drives all around. Anyway, as for WD drives, they have the Enterprise Drives, they are about the same cost ($10 more for the 500GB), but they are not as easy to find as the desktop drives (meaning hardly ever in stock), so I dont even bother looking anymore. Here is the link to the Enterprise Drives from WD: Also, when you get a bad hard drive here, you cant send it back as that would cost more than just going to the store and buying a new one at local pricing. Feel your pain bud... We still use WD drives no questions about it and it is dependent on the application that will install on them... If the application is hard driven intensive, we already know what will happen if we stay with WD, unless we push them to their 10K Enterprise version and then again, why waste the money? One of the most attractive reasons (and I mean only one) is the 5 years warranty that comes with Seagate drives vs. WD drives that come only with 3 years warranty.. Heck, we even tried the Hitachi drives and I will not go there any further than they were substandard... compared to even WD... Now I can see that an argument will be that you are paying for it anyway or the price already have it built in... Of course it does... and for few dollars more, why not get additional 2 years warranty! Both models fail, but not as much as you mention (in our case it is less than 2% regardless what manufacturer claims)... and you are right... if you buy the OEM vesion, the packaging is crap and it is fine with their retail box... My preference though are the drives from Seagate... and their repair or replacement policy does shine better than WD... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
survtech 0 Posted September 17, 2007 We are 100% WD. That's well over 700 "RE" (raid edition) drives. Unfortunately, you can't use the RE's in stand-alone DVR's. We are 100% WD in part because we have found them to be quite reliable (we have less than 1% failure after the first 30 days), but primarily because their customer support is far better than anyone else in the industry. They have even sent engineers to our site when we had compatibility issues with our RAIDs. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CCTV_Suppliers 0 Posted September 17, 2007 We are 100% WD. That's well over 700 "RE" (raid edition) drives. Unfortunately, you can't use the RE's in stand-alone DVR's. We are 100% WD in part because we have found them to be quite reliable (we have less than 1% failure after the first 30 days), but primarily because their customer support is far better than anyone else in the industry. They have even sent engineers to our site when we had compatibility issues with our RAIDs. Whatever works my friend... In your case, look who their audience is and if they value their reputation, they had no choice.. and I glad that they were responsive. I never said that WD makes bad drives, except from our experience and because they run hotter than their counterparts from Seagate, it was a safer bet to go with Seagate hard drives... Even though Seagate drives costs more for obvious reasons, it did not change our opinion... Sometimes it pays to spend little more to get more warranty and cooler drives... When we repair and upgrade all variations of DVRs from all the manufacturers, we see a lot of them used Maxtor drives and what a disaster that was for everyone... According to Seagate and when they bought Maxtor, they are using the same components that Seagate uses and they apparently positioning Maxtor brand drives to be their lower end.. That is nice and great, but I will have a serious problem if anyone of our customer ever find out that we either used or still using Maxtor drives, regardless what Seagate claims now... Only time will tell if people may reconsider Maxtor again, even though it is built different now. That also explains the cost of such Maxtor branded drives being lower than most... for same drive configuration... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rory 0 Posted September 17, 2007 so anyone used Fujitsu drives? They seem to be even cheaper. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CCTV_Suppliers 0 Posted September 17, 2007 Nope, we have not... yet What is your take on their drives? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rory 0 Posted September 17, 2007 me neither .. just saw they were cheap. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
