Typical analog surveillance system the key component is the server video adapter. Works well with existing analog installations, adds the capability of multiple display users (including web-based clients). Disadvantages include limited possibilities of camera control (remote pan, tilt, zoom is possible but expensive), and requirement of dedicated analog (coaxial) cables from each and every camera to the video adapter. Inexpensive consumer grade systems are nearly identical to the diagram above with the exceptions that they frequently employ inexpensive indoor/outdoor IP based cameras, and use a PC based platform with internal disk drives rather than a server with internal disk drives.

Typical digital video surveillance system. The backbone is an Ethernet digital network. Works well for new installations. Supports multiple display users (including web-based clients). Supports camera control (remote pan, tilt, zoom control is delivered over ethernet). Key advantage is wiring flexibility, optional wireless IP, Power over Ethernet (POE) removes the requirements to install AC power to every camera. Facilities upgrades are considerably easier and less expensive. For small configurations, network design and set up is straightforward. For larger configurations, network configuration does require some technical skill. Embedded environments such as ATMs are nearly identical to the diagram above, except the IP cameras transmit compressed video data over wide area networks using TCP-IP.

The SATA II protocol includes First Party Direct Memory Access (FPDMA) queuing which includes a thing called Forced Unit Access (FUA). Each queued data transfer includes a header, the header includes a Forced Unit Access (FUA) bit. When the FUA bit is set, the disk drive will commit the data to the media before returning success status for the command. If the FUA bit is un-set, the disk drive will write to cache and confirm write complete. Queuing in general will help these types of "value added" surveillance applications. Data can be queued first, video can be queued at a lower priority. Dropping a few video packets here and there is not harmful, dropping data packets is not acceptable. With SATA II FPDMA Queuing and FUA, an application can selectively apply FUA on a packet by packet basis to force data such as a financial transaction to write to disk and can allow the video to simply write to cache. This has the effect of allowing read and write caching to be turned “ON”, taking advantage of the F1R 32MB of cache to speed up performance, and at the same time providing security of forcing data to be written all the way to media. This technique has value if the video and data are on the same drive, or on separate drives.

Video surveillance has demands that are meet and often exceeded by Samsung enterprise disk drive business. The Samsung F1R RAID Class drive includes

The video surveillance market is expanding in the area of basic surveillance for institutions, businesses, secure storage, malls, restaurants, etc and video surveillance is expanding with computer applications integrated with surveillance cameras; examples include point of sale, manufacturing, shopping traffic, street and motorway traffic. These increasingly sophisticated uses of surveillance related technologies drive the need is for high capacity drives (500G, 750G, 1TB). Key customer requirements are met and often exceeded: high capacity, reliability, low power, cool, quiet, vibe tolerance. Samsung F1R SATAis an excellent fit in video surveillance environments.