Seagate Updates Its SkyHawk Drive For AI-Based Surveillance

by Adam Armstrong October 30, 2017

written by Adam Armstrong October 30, 2017

Seagate Technology announced a new HDD designed for artificial intelligence (AI) enabled video surveillance solutions, SkyHawk AI. The new HDD takes all of the proven technology of the SkyHawk HDD and increases its performance to provide, what the company refers to as, the ability to manage always-on, data-intensive workloads, while simultaneously analyzing and recording footage from multiple HD cameras.

AI is expanding in use across most fields, however, there are certain instances where it is better suited than its human counterparts. Time consuming, monotonous undertakings, such as surveillance, are better suited to a machine that will never get bored, tired, or lose focus. Surveillance now stretches far beyond just security, and can provide organizations with insights to make them more efficient as well as more profitable. Facial recognition software as well as behavioral analysis (looking for patterns as well as irregularities) will have an increased need for analytics and potentially AI.

Seagate has taken its SkyHawk drive and added its ImagePerfect AI firmware. This addition of firmware speeds up the performance, mostly random performance, to better aide AI with analytics. Seagate also updated its caching algorithms to also better accommodate heavy workloads and increase random seek performance. Similar to the company’s NAS line of drives (IronWolf and IronWolf Pro), the new SkyHawk AI HDDs have higher reliability and longer warranties.

Seagate SkyHawk AI Surveillance HDD specifications:

Capacity: 8TB, 10TB
Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
Drive bays supported: Up to 16
AI streams supported: Up to 16
Cameras supported: Up to 64
Max Sustained Transfer Rate OD: Up to 214MB/s
Cache: 256MB
Reliability
- Tarnish Resistant
- Load/Unload cycles: 300K
- Nonrecoverable Read Errors Rate, Max: 1 per 10E15
- Power-On Hours per year: 8760
- Workload Rate Limit: 550
- MTBF: 2 million hours
- Warranty: 5-year limited
Power
- Typical: 1.8A
- Average: 7.2W
- Idle: 4.9W
- Standby Mode/Sleep Mode: 1.2/1.2W
- Voltage Tolerance (5V): ±5%
- Voltage Tolerance (12V): ±10%
Temperature
- Operating Min: 5°C
- Operating Max: 70°C
- Non-operating: -40°C
Dimensions
- Height: 26.11mm (1.028 in)
- Width: 101.85mm (4.01 in)
- Depth: 146.99mm (5.787 in)
- Weight: 650g (1.433 lb)