Toshiba launches small capacity, large format video surveillance disk drive

Toshiba has launched a 2-6TB capacity video surveillance disk drive. The DT02-V series succeeds the 2014-era MD04ABA-V drives. These had five platters and held 4TB or 5TB.

Judging by Toshiba’s supplied image, the DT02-V has three platters.  

Toshiba DT02-V drive.

In common with its predecessor, the DT02-V has a 6Gbit/s SATA interface, a 128MiB (132.4MB) cache, and supports 24×7 operation recording data from up to 32 video cameras.

The new drive has a 180TB/year workload, 1 million hours MTBF rating, and a maximum sustained transfer rate of 128MiB/sec (134.2MB/sec).

Seagate’s SkyHawk video surveillance drive runs up to 14TB in its helium-filled enclosure.  Western Digital’s Purple video surveillance drives also offers up to 14TB in its helium-filled casing.

Toshiba does have a 14TB helium-filled drive, the MG07, which has a 6Gbit/s SATA interface and spins at 7,200rpm. It could have downrated this to spin at 5,400rpm to make a larger capacity video surveillance drive. but a 3-platter air-filled drive is cheaper of course than a 9-platter helium-filled drive.

DT02-V Series 4TB samples are available from today. 6TB samples will be planned from Jan 2020 and a 2TB sample is expected in March 2020.

N.B. A small request to Toshiba: Please stop citing MiB units and revert to MB, in common with the rest of the industry.