With the demand for reliable storage devices that are capable of handling 24/7 surveillance recordings, the WD Purple Surveillance Hard Drive offers the endurance and performance for high-definition security systems. We take a look at the 8TB WD Purple Surveillance Hard Drive, and here are our thoughts about it.
The hard drive that we received from WD is the unit that came with WD82PURZ as the model number. The WD Purple comes in four different storage versions, which includes 2TB, 6TB, 8TB, and 10TB models. While traditional hard drives feature high endurance rates, WD mentions that the Purple line-up of HDDs are designed to also handle high temperatures during continuous workloads of recording video footage or data from security systems, ensuring that the device runs 24/7. The company has also integrated its Intelliseek Technology that helps to reduce damaging ambient noise and vibrations during heavy workloads.
The front side of the hard drive features the traditional steel plate, along with the Western Digital Purple product sticker and its selling points. The bottom side of the hard drive comes with the exposed circuit board, as you would find in any other similar hard drive. The same goes for the SATA connections on the bottom side of the drive. WD does mention that the drives are optimized to support up to 64 HD cameras. The Purple HDDs also feature the AllFrame AI technology that helps to handle Deep Learning workloads in AI-enabled NVRs, making it a future-ready surveillance hard drive.
The 3.5-inch HDD comes with 256MB of cache, and the disk speed is 7200 RPM. While this drive can be connected internally to Windows devices, it is not meant to be used for normal consumer usage. However, for the sake of testing the performance, we connected the WD Purple 8TB SATA hard drive to our testbed and achieved a CrystalDiskMark SEQ1M Q8T1 read and write speed performance of 260.61 MB/s, and 252.88 MB/s, respectively.
When looking for a reliable storage solution for security cameras, one needs to choose the drive that can withstand the heavy workloads due to continuous video recording, and the WD Purple hard drives fit the bill. The drive features the traditional casing of any HDD but can also withstand the heat produced during workloads. The WD Intelliseek Technology helps to reduce the damage caused by noise and vibrations.
The drives are capable of supporting security systems that consist up to 64 HD security cameras. The WD Purple drives also feature the AllFrame AI technology that helps to work with AI-enabled NVR machines. WD also provides a 3-year limited warranty for the Purple series SATA hard drives.
