I see that a 4 channel DVR costs about GBP150 plus disk. Now I'm tempted to go for the dedicated kit rather than a pc based system, however chatting with the salesperson today he wanted GBP100 for a 1TB sata drive and claimed it was more robust than an ordinary sata drive. I find this difficult to believe, I know people have preferences for different makes but are there differing qualities of hard drive?
AJH
I've had PC standard hard drives in constantly recording television PVRs for years, and on that experience I've voted with the pocket in ignoring that above advice as well.
Besides the manufacturer of the DVR I've got (and am currently installing sunshine/rain permitting) has given their own list of recommended drives in the manual (nothing extraordinary) - and I'm hoping they have more experience about the way their product works than the retailer.
Time will tell :)
Yes there are differences in drive quality, even between drives made by the same company. F'rinstance, Seagate make OEM/Retail drives and Enterprise class drives (usually different interfaces) and I'd expect the OEM/Retail ones to be lower quality than the Enterprise ones (or whatever they're called). Between makes, I've enjoyed great reliability with Maxtor but I know lots of others wouldn't spit on them.
For all intents and purposes though, at the end of the market you're going to be buying in there won't be significant differences although I'm lead to believe the Samsung ECO or Green drives (memory fading) aren't good in DVRs for some reason it wasn't worth me investigating at the time.
I've built a couple of dozen PC DVR systems now (usually 16 channels and up with at least 2 hard drives per machine) and have always used standard off the shelf PC hard drives and some big fans. The AV rated drives don't seem to offer enough advantage over the standard to make them worth the extra.
Reliability of the standard drives, given decent cooling, has been more than good, some have been in 24x7 use for over 6 years now. I have had failures but only two that were hardware related (I.E. non recoverable), one because the cooling in the room failed (the second drive soldiered on) and the other was a clonking drive which wasn't attributable to anything other than the drive unless someone had dropped or banged the system while it was in use. Any other failures had been recoverable with a wipe and format though I always replaced the drive just in case. Most of those 'failed' drives are still used daily in friends and relatives PCs.
I've not seen evidence to support that notion. However, some of the 'green' variants of drives specified for PVR use do claim low power/heat/noise, and some spin at lower speeds. So there might be a certain logic in the claim. Double the price isn't part of it, though.
Rob
There are definitely different qualities, however you don't find out till too late.
Those who build PC's (vommercially) inform me that from time to time one capacity of one manufacturer will be subject to a high return rate, then the issue gets fixed.
A fgriend who uses them, and whose machines are not only on 24x7, but engaged in computations that rewire massive files to be constantly read and written (calculations on huge matrices well beyond the memory limits of the machines) used to find the drives gave out JUST before the warranty of 18 months...
So that is one benchmark for machines that are not only on, but whose drives are seeking reading and writing constantly.
All our computers here - tow desktops and a server - are on 24x7 and the average life seems to be 5-8 years on a drive.
Generally by the the PC fans are/have failed and overheating starts to make the whole shebang less reliable.
I do know that Seagate amongst other do a range of DVR preferred drives that run cooler and quieter than regular drives because unlike a PC or server, a DVR can be totally fan-less so even the faint noise of a normal quiet drive can seem amazingly loud.
In message , Elder writes
We're at different purposes here, I think you're referring to DVR as in a domestic television recorder, I'm referring to DVR as in 24x7 multi-channel CCTV system where the physical box should be locked away out of reach of fingers?
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.