DVR Hard Drive: Standard-Tier Drives, Sizes and the SMR Part Numbers to Check

DVR hard drive: the standard 180TB-a-year class

The two big surveillance lines share one standard rating. Seagate designs SkyHawk for always-on workloads of 180TB a year, and WD gives the AllFrame 4K WD Purple drives, the 1TB to 8TB configurations on its April 2019 sheet, a rating of up to 180TB a year.

Beyond those rows the two sheets are laid out differently, so we do not stretch them into a ranking. At the small end, Seagate's sheet keeps the same terms down to its 1TB model, ST1000VX013: 180TB a year and 1M hours MTBF.

A warranty on a maker's sheet is the maker's statement about the drive it describes. It does not tell you what a particular Amazon.co.uk offer carries, and a used offer in particular deserves a careful read of the listing before you rely on it.

DVR hard drive price on Amazon.co.uk

In all, the table draws on 31 listings in stock. The table shows 12 listings, starting at £31.84/TB. Prices are pounds sterling inc VAT, with new and used offers marked. The table is built by leaving out titles that say SkyHawk AI or Purple Pro, so a listing whose title names neither can still be a higher-tier drive. A WD Purple title whose capacity is not on WD's April 2019 sheet needs its part number checked before you treat it as standard tier.

Toshiba S300 listings appear here too. We have not found a Toshiba S300 sheet in our sources, so those rows carry no tier claim from us, although Hikvision's list does name the 2TB S300, HDWT720UZSVA.

Seagate part numbers for a DVR: CMR on the sheet, SMR on Hikvision's list

A Seagate surveillance part number tells you more than the family name on a listing, and a DVR replacement is where that matters. Seagate's DS2118.1 sheet lists ST8000VX010, ST6000VX009, ST4000VX016, ST3000VX015 and ST2000VX017 in one table and ST1000VX013 in a second, and states CMR for all six. Hikvision's DM SMR table, where it files them under Seagate, names other numbers at the same capacities.

The same table also names a further Seagate drive, ST4000HKVS001, six WD part numbers (WD21PURX-78, WD41PURX-78, WD61PURX-78, WD21HKVS-78, WD41HKVS-78 and WD61HKVS-78) and four Toshiba models (DT02ABA200V, DT02ABA400V, DT02ABA400VH and DT02ABA600VH). Hikvision restricts every drive in it to normal storage: no RAID, no Dual-VCA data storage and no custom log storage. If your DVR uses RAID or Dual-VCA, choose from the left-hand column.

None of the Seagate numbers in that table is among the six models on DS2118.1, so a listing that says only SkyHawk 4TB or SkyHawk 8TB tells you nothing about which kind you will receive. Ask for, or find, the full part number. The Recording column in the price table labels SMR wherever a document covers the part number or its family.

DVR hard drive size: 1TB to 8TB and what decides it

Size is set by your recorder and your footage, not by the drive. We have not found a DVR maker's document in our sources that states the largest drive any particular model accepts, so take that figure from your recorder's manual before anything else.

Within that limit, capacity is cameras times bitrate times days kept, and the CCTV storage calculator does that arithmetic from your own figures. If you need 1TB to match an older recorder, Seagate's sheet names one: ST1000VX013, stated as CMR with 256MB of cache and rated for up to 8 bays. Small drives rarely reach a table sorted by price per terabyte, so search for that part number rather than waiting for a 1TB row here.

Capacity also moves the bay rating on WD's sheet: the lower-capacity Purple models are listed for 8 bays, the 4TB to 8TB models up to WD81PURZ for 8+, and the 12TB, 10TB and WD82PURZ for 16+.

DVR hard drive replacement on a Hikvision recorder

For a Hikvision DVR, the document to check is the v20260515 edition of Hikvision's own drive list, which gives each recorder series its own table. Standard-tier rows in it include these:

• ST8000VX010, Surveillance 8TB, in one series table dated 15 May 2026.
• HDWT720UZSVA, the Toshiba S300 2TB, Surveillance 2TB, in a table dated 15 May 2026.
• WD84PURZ-85B4HY0, the 8TB WD Purple, Surveillance 8T, in tables dated February 2021.

Dates belong to the series table, not the drive. In the table for the [DVR] 7204HGHI-K and 7208HGHI-K (K9B1) series, WD84PURZ-85B4HY0 carries 23 February 2021; in other tables, such as the one for the [NVR] iDS-96000NXI-I series, the same part number carries 8 February 2021, and rows for the bare WD84PURZ carry 18 July 2024. Find your DVR's own series first.

Encrypted IoT-model drives are a separate trap, because Hikvision says they will not work in its recorders at all, so pass over any listing that mentions IoT. To set every quoted list entry beside Amazon.co.uk stock, use Hikvision hard drive; for a network recorder running analytics, NVR hard drive covers the AI tier this table leaves out.