Hard Drive Selection - WD Gold Vs Purple

Well I have done testing on the new Gold ones over the break.

Also there are two types of WD Red drives, Red Pro (7200rpm) and red NAS (5400rpm/intellipower)

You will not get a straight answer out of WD on what "intellipower" is other than it is a variable rpm rate that adjusts to demand but not to the speeds of a 7200rpm drive. 

rulle of thumb its a 5400RPM drive unless stamped otherwise or 5400rpm=intellipower. But it does change spin speeds depending on demand how much we will never know Because WD wont come off of it. 

the WD gold drives replace the "black and yellow" enterprise drives like these

they are one of the best most reliable drives out there along with being the most expensive.

WD red pro is my choice for Raid style storage for video of any size. this factors in cost and performance for the long term. just stay away from the 3TB ones for what ever reason only the 3TB drives have a high failure rate.

WD red NAS, Black, and purple are the drives I use for single or 2 drive "box kits" or 32 channel systems or smaller. its not worth it to spend any more on systems that small these days.  

personally- I buy WD red Pro, Black and Purple drives for video storage, I like 7200rpm drives as they are the most stable reliable and cost effective drives for ME to use in my situation. Purple drives go into 8 or 16 channel systems I do on the cheap.

also on a side note do not use WD Green drives. they will fail after about a 1 and a half of hard use even on small systems.  I had seen these drives pop up on "energy star certified" NVRs/DVRs. they are not worth the scrap metal they are made with.

Hi Integrator 1 / Eddie,

Full disclosure - I work for Seagate.

Our Skyhawk range of Surveillance HDD's have fixed RPM speeds. 5900RPM on 1-4TB and 7200RPM on 6-10TB for all round stable performance and no concerns around frame loss or damage to the HDD. The full range is both DVR and NVR ready although the high cap (4TB+) have embedded RV sensors which allow the drives to tolerate the vibration in 8+ bay systems.

We also have a range of Ironwolf drives which are primarily positioned for NAS, that being said, they are optimized for mixed workloads and we are getting great feedback from customers using these in surveillance solutions where there is a higher 'read' component. There is also a Pro version which gets you a higher 300TB/y workload, 5 Year warranty and 2 years of recovery services, larger number of bays supported and improvements on most performance metrics.

If you want the top of the line, we have a full Enterprise storage portfolio and are the leader in that space. We have a full range of Nearline SATA and SAS HDDs in various configurations...

We are all about getting you the best fit HDD for your application. As Eddie mentions, there is no need to pay above the odds for your HDD, especially in a typical 8/16 channel system, for this our Skyhawk drives will have you covered at a competitive cost.

Feel free to reach out if you are interested any getting any test units to compare for yourself.

Thanks

As Eddie points out, the Gold is the old Black and Yellow Enterprise drives. But, I wonder if Eddie knows what the Purple line was before? They were Green AV-GP drives. Lol

Thanks for all info , very helpfull