WD Purple 4TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch WD40PURX

Pros: specific purposed drive. Came well packaged.

Cons: slightly premium price, but well worth it.

Overall Review: solved some problems I was having with my Zmodo NVR. OK..so I wasn't using an approved drive, but it did make a difference (this time) Not reindexing and coming off the bus for a fraction of a second kept the zmodo operating correctly for notifications. So I'm convinced that using a purple drive for a nvr system is a must to avoid a headache. I mean really. Save $40 and have to take $100 worth of antacid chasing gremlins? In all fairness to me,I have been using standard drives in my older nvr's without any issues, but these were far less resolution models.

Pros: Plugged this into a LaView system. Can retain about 3 months of footage from 4 cameras at high quality settings. Probably about 1 month with 8 cams. Video playback is error and glitch free. No jumpiness. Runs quiet and cool. Pulls up video smoothly. No hard drive chugging. This drive is tuned for reliable performance in systems that must stay on and continuously record 24/7. A lot of space, so you have breathing room and margin, in case you have an incident you have to retrieve and review from your shop or in your home. Built to last even in hotter environments like server rooms or back closets.

Cons: Incompatible with older DVR systems. Check the requirements before you install in a Zmodo or other low end cam systems.

Overall Review: Looking forward to the day drives with this capacity come in the smaller laptop format, but that is probably not yet possible.

Pros: Reliable hard disk drive, specifically designed for DVR purpose. Runs fairly cool.

Cons: Price is pretty high. But since this hard disk drive is designed for a special purpose, that is understandable. Sequential read : 146.2 MB/s and Sequential write: 143.2 MB/s. Slow speed compared with other desktop HDD. But more than adequate for DVR uses.

Overall Review: Not all DVR will support 4TB HDD and if using PC based DVR, have to format as GPT partitions in order to use full 4TB in 1 partition.

Pros: 4 TERABYTES ! Trusted brand name, by me Up to 32 input devices..that's a lot Good Performance drive as well Sequential Read : 171.609 MB/s Sequential Write : 169.872 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 47.021 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 81.440 MB/s Those are good numbers Runs cool. 5 degrees less than my 2 TB WD Black 3 year Warranty

Cons: Not easy to find the info that indicates which security systems are designed to take full advantage of the Purple lines features. The average Joe might not even think to look. Fully compatible with only very expensive pro or rich guy surveillance systems 3 year warranty. I know I have it in Pros too.

Overall Review: Everywhere I go there are cameras recording data which means big sales for the camera makers and thus the storage industry. WD is attempting to get their share of this market with their Purple line of drives. The "tag" WD uses that makes these drives surveillance specific is termed "Allframe". The advantage of the AllFrame technology is possible only with host controller support. The vendor must be on the WD compatibility list to take advantage of the surveillance-specific features in the Purple drives. On WD's compatibility page is a list of 27 vendors and the models that support Purple. Most of the names on the list are not familiar to me. I started searching Newegg. Newegg has ~130 vendors listed under the heading: Security & Surveillance > Video Monitoring Kits / All in One Systems. I selected at random just a couple; Geovision and QNAP, to see if what I was thinking was correct. I was thinking that the qualified vendors are more then likely "professional" vendors. By professional I mean anything that doesn't have to do with home or very small business security. If price tag has anything to do with my theory then I am born out. The QNAP offerings range in price from $982 to $4,902. I am not spending that to protect my home or very small business. If I am a large, well heeled company then my budget may allow for that but for my home, not happening. What the people that do the reviews on Newegg ARE buying range in the $200 to $300 area. LaView, a popular well reviewed vendor is not on the WD compatibility list. Neither is 7modo, Night Owl and many more. This means that the Purple may not be money well spent for home surveillance. Is it money well spent for essential video security recording for large business? Maybe if reduction of frame loss, improved playback and an increased number of drive bays supported is important. The first data I concern myself with when shopping hard drives is rotational speed. 7200 or 5400? WD has obfuscated, for reasons I can only speculate on but won't, rotational speed with the "Intellipower" designation for the Purple drives RPM. HWInfo 64 reports the RPM's as 5400 which is plenty fast enough for the purpose of this drive, namely video surveillance. I am using this drive to store all my video: Home movies, DVD's, Blu-Ray's, etc., etc. In almost of month of use it has been flawless for local and wireless networked viewing. This is a very good drive. If you are a large company interested in quality surveillance then there is no better choice according to the data sheets. If you're a small company or homeowner on a $300 budget you will probably not be able to take advantage of the primary selling feature of this drive. BUT that does NOT mean you are making an incorrect choice as I wrote this is a solid HD. If you just want a large fast drive to store and access video this is a very good choice.

Pros: + A proper drive for real surveillance needs. What this means is that this drive was designed to handle reading and writing multiple streams at once (Up to 32 camera feeds reliably, for instance). This is actually rather difficult for a normal-use hard drive to reliably achieve without stuttering, drops or other random performance issues. + In a practical test of 12 cameras at a heavy load of 1080p at 30 frames per second running for one day this drive kept all the video up to speed with no drops and no stuttering. I used a standard desktop oriented 7200 RPM drive to compare and I'd get random drops and stutters here and there. It's not the hardware of the Purple line drives more than it's the firmware. So when you see, "it's only a RED or GREEN drive lolol" it's only half the truth. + Appropriately powered at an average of 5.2 Watt peaks, 3-4 average. + Quiet, cool and low vibration. Key requirements for a long living 24/7 drive. + 2TB is almost just enough to handle a week of storage for 6 cameras at 720p and 24 fps.

Cons: - Compared to the competition of other surveillance drives this drive performs a good bit less in write intensive situations. This drive strives to balance read/write performance equally more than one over the other. As such 32 cameras is definitely the practical limit for this drive. Though depending on the configuration I wouldn't even go that high, maybe only 16 cameras at 1080p, 32 at 720p and a lower frame rate. - Doesn't have proper sensors to ensure reliable RAID/NAS surveillance storage. While you can technically do it, I wouldn't. Seagate's consumer solutions, for now, offer better scalability and performance in that respect. Say about 15% better performance and up to 16 drives in RAID arrays where WD only suggests up to 8 with Purple. - An average 3 year warranty for this type product. Not good, not bad, just standard. However, my experience with WD customer service has been a mixed bag to this day. Their support staff would rather deflect responsibility on their part than actually investigate why a product of theirs failed, and that's if they even address your actual problem at all. To them, it's inconceivable it was due to a defect on their end in any way. However, if you do have a standard failure within the warranty period RMAs are of average quality, always re-certified junk (that bothers me if the product fails within the first month. I bought NEW not refurbished, WD) But in all honesty that's just the sad standard that this industry implements at the moment. Things won't be much different with Seagate, though they do offer better customer support instead of just playing the blame game. Of course, as always with customer support YMMV. - This isn't a con but since I don't have a time turner I cannot vouch for the reliability of this drive over the long term. If and when it fails I'll definitely update my review. As it stands, I don't see any reason for it to prematurely fail under normal conditions and I've had this drive running 24/7 since I've received it with no signs of quality degradation. - Another "not a con" but definitely needs to be addressed is that I don't see any documentation about this drive supporting outdoor climates. While WD claims these drives handle heat differentials I don't think they mean outdoor winter to outdoor summer temperatures. Which is notable as I know quite a few people implement surveillance systems in non-climate controlled structures. Since WD has yet to get back to me on that question, I cannot say for sure. Perhaps they can respond to this review with actual outdoor (but properly sheltered) operating temperatures, if any.

Overall Review: 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.

Pros: 4TB of hard drive space, awesome! Built for surveillance systems Rugged and solid design Rock solid feel and very heavy (quality parts) (in my testing) supported 8 cameras with no problems It was able to handle h264 compression on all 8 cameras I like that it states "surveillance" right on the hard drive low noise and runs cool too HDD is tuned for reliability running at low RPM, which is great for surveillance 3 years of warranty

Cons: price is just a little big higher than a 7800rpm 4TB hard drive although it's heavy with quality parts, it's quite heavier than the 1TB that it replaced I accidentally formatted in Windows 7 to NTSF and that took forever. Should keep it to GPT for surveillance. Older DVR's only see 2TB on it even though it's a 4TB..not really the hard drive's fault at all though but I wanted to mention it.

Overall Review: I replaced the 2TB HDD for this WD 4TB HDD into a SWANN surveillance DVR with 8 cameras and I think it was the greatest upgrade I could do for the DVR. Although the DVR does have fans, the unit was constantly hot to the touch because the HDD continually ran when recording or not. I noticed that the DVR unit was not so hot after installing the WD 4TB. I tested for 1 full week, recording 24/7 and it's not even half full! Playback was flawless and usually there would be a little delay when I hit the record button (from standby), with the new WD 4TB HDD, I did not notice that lag. Overall, this WD 4TB has great features built in specifically built for surveillance DVR's. I'm sure it would run in a NAS, but since it's built for low-continuous speed writing and reading, I wouldn't recommend it for any application other than surveillance DVR's. I rate it 5 stars for quality, endurance, long 3 year warranty and it just plain out works out of the box. I would HIGHLY recommend it if you need to replace your HDD on your surveillance DVR, just make sure that the DVR supports 4TB HDD drives.

Pros: Designed for 24/7/365 use for camera systems, but still usable in other scenarios. Good price. Good warranty. Performance for usage scenario is good.

Cons: Warranty not as long as black and enterprise drives, again these aren't designed to be in that segment. Slower overall speed even when compared to standard 7200 RPM drives, though these are designed this way on purpose.

Overall Review: I was actually quite impressed with the performance of this drive. On my Z97 platform I was able to get over 100 Megabytes a second transfers going when the drive was empty. Not bad for a drive that isn't really designed for speed. Bursts were over 300 megabytes a second for an empty drive. In my Synology Cloudstation I was able to record 5 different cameras without any stutter from the drive. Even when reviewing the recorded video the playback was smooth even while recording in the background. I can't say for sure on a system with more than this that there wouldn't be stutter, but for my needs it was good. Overall I've had nothing but good success with WD drives. I've only ever had 1 be DOA (dead on arrival) but was easily replaced by WD's support group. I definitely prefer these over the WD Green Drives. Those are nothing but super slow and honestly have had a higher failure rate from what I've read than any other WD drive I've ever seen.

Pros: Easy to upgrade the clubs Samsung sds p5 8 camera system for endless high quality surveillance Hd Video is smooth (not jumpy) even night video is improved h264 compression all 8 cameras running 24/7 for 3 months should not fill up this drive.

Cons: It is a heavy brick lol Can be a hassle to format gpt if you are using a windows os Also extra steps were going gpt to ntfs

Overall Review: The speed of this drive is equal to a wd black and the quietness is a quiet as a wd green. Excellent security hard drive and this will get a lot of use.A very good 3 year warranty so I will check back with you in a year of 24/7/365