detailedReviews: detailedReviews 1: content: This drive from Western Digital was one of the few to show up in my research, that provided the feature and design points I was seeking.
Offering a durable lifespan, with the concept that it's under 24/7 use of writing, it's more than satisfactory for a local home installation of cameras. The large 4TB Capacity also ensures high quality or multiple camera feeds will be stored far longer before being overwritten or requiring deletion.
Utilising a common SATA interface and CMR recording, your speeds are not harmed or limited in capacity for the hardware while maintaining good compatibility with past and present hardware. The notable 256MB Cache also helps accelerate the workload and keep a sizable buffer for incoming streams.
It's also shockingly quiet while under operation, requiring a dead silent room to even notice -- a plus for anyone since it's designed for constant operation. There are also accelerometers to help the drive predict and counter any vibrations or movements that'd otherwise throw the head off track, ensuring a more consistent performance.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Durable lifespan, quiet operation, good cache
detailedReviews 2: content: My business is shooting and editing multi-camera video and audio. I recorded mobile SSD drives, and transfer the results to hard drives in a five drive Thunderbolt enclosure. When a drive is full, I replace it with an empty drive and retire it to a plastic box for archival storage. It makes more sense to keep projects on a disk for storage than to reformat the drive or find another archival means. WD Purple drives are designed for continuous running, and are fast with ample drive cache. I find them a good substitute for WD Black drives, which seem to be discontinued.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Designed for continuous running, fast ample cache
detailedReviews 3: content: I purchased this as a data storage/backup drive for my desktop PC. My main drive is a1TB NVME drive. The data drive I use for movies, songs, and backups and digital images. Since I am not booting with the drive I don't care about raw performance, nor will I pay for it. With that said I am VERY happy with this drive. It only spins at 5400 RPM, so the access time is slightly slower, but it makes no difference to me. Maximum transfer rate is nearly 200MB/sec. High capacity drives have dense platters and are able to pull data faster. I am a Nazi for eliminating extraneous sound and used to keep my drives inside enclosures to reduce sound. My quietest drive to date is the Samsung HD 503HI, and this is even quieter. I have several large case fans spinning slowly and if I turn them off I can ever so slightly hear a faint humming or click, but otherwise I hear NOTHING. This is my first WD drive (have always used Samsung). I cannot speak to the drive's reliability as I've only had it for one month. It is labeled for ""Surveillance,"" so if it's meant to be running 24/7- 365 it is meant to get use in commercial/industrial environments. I think everyone with a desktop PC should adopt this system. It is very easy to backup anything important- save it to your C: drive as well as your backup E: drive or whatever. If one your main drive goes kaput you have the backup to pull your saved data from. You can use flash drives for additional redundancy and portability, but in my experience they are not so reliable.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Quiet operation, good transfer rates, surveillance optimized
detailedReviews 4: content: There are a LOT of hard drive options out there, and the differentiation between them can be subtle, to say the least. To try to tease out as much detail about this product out as I could, instead of putting it directly in my DVR I began by connecting it to my computer via SATA to run the drive through its paces and get a sense for what this piece of hardware does. I formatted the drive MacOS Extended to provide a clear comparison with other hard drives I have used, and then used the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test tool to generate some benchmarks. The drive clocks 173.9 MB/s write and 174.6 MB/s read. The drive maintained this level of performance plus or minus 1 MB/s under sustained stress testing using the Blackmagic application. Performance-wise, this is lackluster compared to other hard drive technologies on the market, but of course this drive isn’t designed to provide extreme data transfer rates. As 5400rpm drives go, this one is actually quite good performance-wise. By way of comparison, a 2TB WD Red I had on hand clocked 152MB/s read and 154MB/s write in the same test. After 20 minutes of stress-testing with the drive exposed in a “toaster” style dock to 70ºF ambient air, the surface temperature of the drive was 83.5º on the top surface, 88ºF on the underside of the platter, measured with an IR thermometer. Though not a terribly scientific test, this does suggest that this drive has decent thermal management properties. Acoustic properties are fine, there is a noticeable whirring sound as the drive spins up but otherwise it’s fairly quiet. In an enclosure it would be a very quiet device. Installation in my camera DVR, an Apsonic 8-channel model, posed no snags. The drive installed physically without problems and the system immediately recognized it as an unformatted drive of the correct size, and proceeded to format it without issue. Formatted in the system I got 3.73gb of usable space. I set each of my 720p cameras to the max bitrate and off it went. Over the course of my weeklong evaluation so far, the drive has taken every byte of data thrown at it by the cameras with no issues whatsoever. In terms of the qualitative system performance (lag time opening recordings and so forth), I don’t notice any difference between this drive and the WD Red model it replaced. What differentiates this drive from other 5400rpm hard disks on the market? To be frank, WD’s marketing is fairly obtuse about what actually makes this drive different, and nothing in my evaluation revealed what could be described as a major differentiating feature. Examining the drive next to a 4tb WD Red I have, the drive is physically slightly different, so at least we know it’s not just a re-badging of the same product. While the claim that this drive is “engineered specifically for surveillance security systems” is beyond my capability to verify, this drive does seem to be a high-quality device that does very well in this application. As with any storage device, longevity is of the utmost importance, and only time will tell on that count. But so far, this product is off to a great start, and I feel it offers a compelling option to anyone seeking a drive for surveillance DVR applications. I would recommend it.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Good performance for surveillance, decent thermal management
detailedReviews 5: content: My half-brother has a nice spot where he employs 24 cameras around his property. my 10 cameras are no match for his collection, so he was quick to snag up an opportunity to try out a WD HDD considering he was actually in the market for 4 new drives. After I told him I had one that he should try, he was more than willing to let me get my paws on his equipment and install this drive after I told him my review could REALLY use an abusive system like his. After 2 weeks he was sold on every aspect of the drive and bought him 4 new WD Purple 4T's. He decided to use it on the most active 4 cameras which he uses for training videos on how to break new horses. We were VERY impressed at the steadiness and clarity that was captured and recorded. . So the NEXT 2 weeks I plugged it in, formatted it, and started some obscure testing on this drive to see how it would handle for the average home user/gamer. Well I SAY average, but you might not know me. I am an abuser of equipment. Torrenting like a demon all OVER this drive. I installed 5 games on this drive and played them all without hitches or radical load times. There were some hiccups once in a while, but that is PURELY due to the 64 meg cache. 128 would set this drive alive for multi-purpose use. I edited and assembled 6 videos on top of testing disktrix disk defragmenter on it. IMPRESSIVE... . This drive is neck and neck competition for some Samsung 5400 rpm drives. and THEY are pretty snappy! . The games I installed AND played (not just tested) were Dead By Daylight, Battlefield 1, Call of Duty WWII, Just Cause 3 and Syndicate. My system is an AMD Phenom 2 x6 1035T, 8G, R9 280.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Impressive for multi-purpose use, good cache
detailedReviews 6: content: So, I have 3 IP cameras in my home connected to a DVR. I placed this drive in the DVR and began recording non-stop for 7 days. It worked. It worked just like the drive I replaced (which I'll likely put back in as it's a full terabyte in size). But it worked, just as advertised. Now I couldn't see a difference in performance or in video quality. I couldn't hear or feel a difference. It was like I never swapped the drives. But this is kinda what you want right? Western Digital advertises this drive with a simple sentence: “WD Purple is built for personal, home office or small business surveillance systems using up to 64 HD cameras.” So they are saying this drive is somehow best for using in a digital recording device. Is it just marketing? Yes and no. They put a little more emphasis on these: “Tuned for write-intensive, low bit-rate, high stream-count applications typical to most surveillance applications. Prioritized write-operations for maximized surveillance performance. TLER & ATA streaming support.” That sounds great, right? Will it work NOTICEABLY better than any other drive you use in your DVR? Probably not. I didn't notice anything. Therefore I'd say just buy whatever gives you the best bang for your buck and leaves you with the warmest fuzziest feelings. If I were upgrading or putting a new DVR system together for security recording I would probably get one of these purple drives over say a WD black drive. Both will fulfill the function I need them to but the purple drive is cheaper and I would feel like I was wasting the black drive's amazing stats in a DVR system... so warm fuzzy feelings and price per megabyte. Base your purchasing decision on that
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 4
title: Designed for surveillance, marketing is key
detailedReviews 7: content: This drive is specifically built for security systems and is on the approved list for an 8 camera Amcrest system which is what I tested it in. Surveillance hard drives are optimized for efficient writing in real time. In my raw testing, I found that this drive was actually faster than a standard 7200 hard drive (1 TB 6 GB/s WD Blue 7200 rpm 64 mb cache) in most categories, with one exception, writing random 4k frames. In sequential writing, the drive was consistently writing 154 MB/s. 4K random writes were averaging about 1.55 MB/s. Even though read performance is not as important for a surveillance drive, the read speeds were also impressive, averaging almost 157 MB/s. This bodes well for users that need to read and write streams at the same time. Impressively, this drive outperformed all rated specs for both reading and writing. I recorded 8 960H video streams over several days. The drive performed perfectly, no pixilation or dropped frames that I could see.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Faster than standard HDD, impressive read/write
detailedReviews 8: content: I used this in a BlueIris system and it performed well. I would not hesitate to recommend that someone consider this drive for their surveillance drive needs. Please be aware that this drive is a surveillance drive. It is designed to constantly record video with no frame loss. They are more tolerant of errors. When a drive performs error correction it stops writing to correct the error. If a surveillance drive stopped recording, it may miss the important details you need. WD Purple drives do not perform error correction because they focus on recording. WD calls this AllFrame 4k technology. This drive can be used in a RAID array but you would only want to use it to record video from cameras. Do not use this drive as your main system drive or to store pictures, music, games, etc. Drives designed for multiple types of data will be much faster and will actually perform error correction to protect your data. Do your homework and you will be much happier with your purchase.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Designed for constant recording, error tolerant
detailedReviews 9: content: I bought this to install in a USB 3.0 external case to use as an external backup for my RAID system, which has five of these 2TB drives. So far not a single burp in two years (kow). I like these because they run cooler, and are designed to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These are designed for DVR type applications, but seem to work great in my desktop PC. What's the difference between DVR and desktop PC applications? Audio and video applications (like a DVR) are time sensitive, but PC data is not. A typical desktop hard drive will try up to ten times to write to a block, and if it fails, it will map to an alternate. This may take some time, but that doesn't impact the data as long as it gets written successfully. The information I have read suggests these drives will only try three times before mapping to an alternate block. If that's true then this type of drive will use up its spare block pool faster, but for all we know, these may have a larger spare block pool to start with. Both types of hard drives use the same error correction code (ECC) to protect the data. Some believe these will allow errors, thinking that video is not error sensitive (which is totally bogus). DVRs use a file system just like a desktop PC, so if that were true, then the file system could become corrupt causing a file or the entire drive to become unreadable. Or, a critical frame of video could end up on a bad block and render the recording useless. Neither scenario would bode well for DVR manufacturers.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Designed for DVR, cooler, good for 24/7
detailedReviews 10: content: I intentionally avoided using benchmark numbers with this review because I feel they're a misrepresentation of what this drive intends to do and how it operates in the real world under its intended application. While you technically can get a better drive, benchmark-wise, it won't always perform as well due to firmware features the Purple line implements. This drive is designed around the idea of caching streams so you don't incur drops and it does that well. The WD Purple basically performs like a NAS drive until its firmware kicks in with features to help balance surveillance workloads. This is not a good drive for storage NAS, access and write times will be less optimal and sensors that help balance RAID loads are absent here. This is definitely not a good drive for desktops or OS drives as everything will be less than optimal in that performance arena. Depending on what type of performance you want this may not be the drive for you. Seagate's surveillance drives, for instance, off better specific scenario performances, particularly in writing and RAID setups. WD chose to go with a more balanced approach in which it doesn't win many real benchmark battles but it does achieve a respectable balance between everything. This is definitely a good starter drive if you don't know where to start and don't have a crazy high end and demanding surveillance system, and if you do know what you're doing but have a smaller system this drive shouldn't disappoint you, either.
marketplace: google
source: google
sourceLogo: https://i.flash.tech/a/rs:fill:300:400:0/g:sm/plain/s3://flash-creatives/images/merchants/google
starRating: 5
title: Balanced approach, good for surveillance workloads
