WD Purple and Seagate Surveillance Hard Drives

Author: John Honovich, Published on Feb 25, 2014

Western Digital wants our help marketing their new hard drives to "fly by night type folks", explaining to us that you could still be valuable until IT people wipe you out.

When presented in such a flattering way, we felt obliged to comply. What great magic does a 'purple' hard dive hold?

Purple ********

******** *** *** ***** ** *** ******* ******* ******, ******* the ***** ***** ****, '***** ********' *****, *** ******* *** and **** *** *****. ** **** ****** **** ***** ** the ****** ***, **** ***********, ********* *** ************.

**** ***** **** ** ** ***** **** ** ** *******, they **** **** ***** *** **** ** ******* *********** ***** immediately ********* **, ******* ***** *********** *********. ** ** ** yet ******* ************ ******* '****** *****'.

** *** ******** * *** ******** ******* ** *** ****** surveillance ******:

  • ******* ** ******, ******* ** ***-******* *******
  • **** **** (**** ******* ***** ********) * ******* ** ***** ********** *********
  • ******** '**********' ***** **** ***** ********* ********.

*********, *** ********* ********** **** ***** ****** ** ********* ******** as ** ******** *** **** ******* ******** **** ****** ** make **** '******'.

**** ** ***** * ****** ********* ***** *****:

*** *** ********* ** *** ************* ** *** ******** ******* up **** * ****** ** ******* ******* * ****. **** said, ********* **** ** *** * ****** *******.

*******

** ******** ****** ******* ** $** *** * *** *****, $120 *** * ***, $*** *** * *** *** $*** for * ***. *****, **** ********* **** ***** *** **** expensive **** *****.

Benefits ** ***** ******?

******** *** *******. ** ***** *** ********* ******, *********** ************ for ******* **** ** ******** ** **** ** *******. ****, the ****** *** **** ********* *** * *** ** ** HD ******* *** * *** *** ***** *** ********* (***** is ****** ***).*******, *** **** **** ** ** *******, **** recommend ***** ** *** ** ******.

*************, ****, ******* **** ** ********* ** ******* ***** **** this ********** *** *** **** ******** ** ************ ************ *** outside **** ***** (**** *** **** ****** ** ********** ***** under **).

************, ******** ** ***-** ******, **** *** ******** * * - * **** ***** *********** ********, ****** ** ****** ******** that.

*** ******** ******* *** ** ** ****** ** *********, ** they *** **** * ************ ******** ******** ** ***** ** / ****, ****** **** ***** ******* *********.

***********?

****'* ******** **** ***** ************** **** ***** **** ** *********** ********* ** ** ******* drives. ****** **, ***** ******** *** *** ***** ****. ****** aims ** ** ********** **** ********* **** ***** ** ** could ***** **** ******* *** ***** *** ****** **. ** contrast, ** *** ******* ****, ***** **** *** *** **** frequently ***** ************ ***** *** ***********. ******, ******* *** **** just********* * *** **** ******* (********** ******** ******* ** ****).

Comments (25)

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Brian Rhodes

IPVMU Certified | 02/25/14 05:20pm

"Western Digital wants our help marketing their new hard drives to "fly by night type folks", explaining to us that you could still be valuable until IT people wipe you out."

The majority of IPVM just scratched WD off the Christmas card list.

Undisclosed Integrator #1

In reply to Brian Rhodes | 02/25/14 05:48pm

In this province, IT people are NOT allowed to sell and install surveillance cameras for others. Well, unless they get their BSP permit which costs a bundle, not worth it for them.

Rukmini Wilson

02/25/14 05:47pm

The clearest benefit for WD is likely on marketing,,,

Grapevine says WD has offered Prince multi-millions for campaign to start this spring, tentatively named "Purple Raid"...

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Ari Erenthal

Chesapeake & Midlantic | In reply to Rukmini Wilson | 02/25/14 10:14pm

Purple RAID, surely?

Rukmini Wilson

In reply to Ari Erenthal | 02/25/14 11:34pm

Yes, fumbled at the goal line, although may I plead that even the most meticulous posters somtimes fall prey to the ruthless indiscrimination of the autoCapitalizer...

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Ari Erenthal

Chesapeake & Midlantic | In reply to Rukmini Wilson | 02/26/14 02:22pm

I'm just glad to have finally caught you in a mistake. I thought you were some kind of surveillance posting bot or something. Nice to know you're human...

Rukmini Wilson

In reply to Ari Erenthal | 02/27/14 06:47am

Did you say mmmistake, Dave?? Open the Pod doors! ;)

Note: The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of eror.

Shawn Ho

02/25/14 06:22pm

Does the purple series include anti-vibration sensor? I think it is crucial for racks with multiple machines. WD, compared to Seagate, is slow in surveillance industry. Hope this purple series can be their secret weapon.

John Honovich

IPVM | 02/25/14 07:19pm

Here is Seagate's feedback on what is new for them:

"Surveillance HDD is our 7th generaton of our surveillance optimized drives and we've added in 3 new features to support the growing surveillance segment.

  1. 4TB Capacity point to support the continued need for more and more space. (We also offer a 3TB drive which include features 2 and 3)
  2. R/V (rotational vibration) sensors so that the drives can more reliably perform in systems that scale into multi drive arrays. RV sensors mean that the drive is more reliable and can perform more consistently in an environment with higher levels of vibration. It also means the drive can perform better in RAID optimized systems which we see more customers using to further improve their data reliability and backup capabilities.
  3. Idle 3 is a new feature which ensures the drive is quick to begin recording whenever it's needed (as opposed to taking some time to spin back up when it goes into a standby or sleep mode). This means customers won't miss a frame is a motion sensing camera is activated when someone comes into a picture.
The 7th generation Surveillance HDD will be available in both 3 and 4TB capacities."

Undisclosed Manufacturer #2

02/25/14 10:03pm

I would really be interested in seeing all these metrics to failure rates on drives. Sure we can see that integrators prefer WD Black drives as the most reliable, but in all honesty I have never had a problem using a WD Green drive over a black drive. Who knows maybe I've been lucky.

Undisclosed Integrator #1

In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #2 | 02/25/14 10:06pm

Actually, the Taiwan manufacturer of my past DVR's use green WD HDD's for lower heat reason.

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Luis Carmona

IPVMU Certified | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #2 | 02/25/14 10:30pm

Working on, dare I say hundreds of computers.... maybe not hundreds, but anyways, computers with slowing performance and problems over short periods of tim, a lot of them had Green drives.

We tried several different models of Iomega's NAS storage devices. Initially certain models had green drives and certain ones had RAID designed drives. The ones with the Greens drives gave us the most problems and scored lower using disk speed tools. Eventually Iomega told us the new models would not have Green drives anymore, or at least the rack mounted models.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Luis Carmona | 02/25/14 10:38pm

Luis, were these being used for recording surveillance video?

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Luis Carmona

IPVMU Certified | In reply to John Honovich | 02/25/14 10:48pm

Some we used for recording surveillance and fortunately the models with the Green drives were in demo and R&D applications.

The speed tests I did were using one of the many disk speed utilities found on the internent. Of the Green drive unit and real RAID drive unit, both 4-disk RAID 5, I htink the Green drive unit was about 20% slower, I think.

I also base my experiance on seeing Green line drives in regular desktop computers and laptops. I would not trust a Green drive in either, so I certainly don't trust it for heavy duty surveillance recording.

Undisclosed Manufacturer #2

In reply to Luis Carmona | 02/25/14 10:38pm

I should have clarified a little. I have used Green drives only for storage of video footage not for operating systems. Doing some research I have found that this is the best application for Green drives.

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Joe Mirolli

IPVMU Certified | 02/26/14 12:10pm
Nothing but problems for us with the WD green drives in surveillance recorders.

Martin Griffin

02/26/14 03:52pm

Not sure has this already been posted, but Blackblaze's recent report on HDD failures is a good read http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

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Luis Carmona

IPVMU Certified | In reply to Martin Griffin | 02/26/14 04:20pm

Good post. It's interesting they have Samsung drives in there and a shame there's only so few, so the results are not really comparable to the other drives, but I'm not surprised anytime someone finds a low failure rate for the Samsungs. When I had a ran a computer store we found that while Samsung drives may not have scored the higest in speed, they were close enough with the benefit that had very very low failure rates compared to Seagate and WD. This was 6 years or more ago, so that has to be taken into account as manufacturer quality output can go up or down over time.

Just as a side note, the very worst drives we ran across in the early to mid 2000's was Quantum Fireballs (ironic), and later Maxtor rebranded Fireballs when they bought Quantum. Failure rate under a year was near 40% to 50%.

Undisclosed End User #3

02/26/14 09:45pm

Wow, this post provided quite a bit of great info we did not know. We had chosen 4TB red drives for an enterprise 4-drive 10TB NAS RAID6. Although it's not primarily used for video surveillance, I wonder if we'll ever wish that we had chosen black?

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Mark McRae

Inaxsys Security Systems | In reply to Undisclosed End User #3 | 02/27/14 01:35pm

From what i read, you chose correctly in using the WD RED for your NAS RAID6 setup. The RED is made for small RAID deployments. Black is a high quality drive but it is not made for RAID deployments - if you read posts on Tom's Hardware amd other sites, they recommend against using Black (or Green) for any NAS/RAID deployments. The recommended WD drives for these applications are the RED (for small RAID clusters) and RE4 (for any size).

Personally, we build a large amount of servers and we only use Black (for non-raid applications) and RE4 (for RAID applications or for any time there are more than 5 drives in a server). We tried Seagate (horrible experience for us, we will never use them again) and we tried WD Green (again, bad experience and a very large amount of failures) and we will stick with WD Black and RE4 even though they are more expensive

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Jon Dillabaugh

Pro Focus LLC | 02/27/14 02:04pm

Is this a simple renaming of the AV-GP series? Even though the AV-GP series of drives were in the Green family, they weren't your average garden variety Eco drive. They were 5400 RPM spindles, which puts them in the Eco class by default, but they were much heavier than other Green, or for that matter Blue, drives. The AV-GP drives were much heavier, like the Black and RE series drives.

What I think this is was a marketing decision to differentiate AV-GP drives from the other Eco, low cost, Green drives.

Michael Terrizzi

03/01/14 02:52am

Lorex DVR in Ad. Ill stick with my black FAEX and RE4 drives

Rogier van der Heide

03/06/14 01:12pm

I just got told by one of our suppliers that the WD Black Caviar series is ending ?!

Anyone heard similar stories or is this one particular supplier just telling fairy tales ?

Undisclosed Manufacturer #2

03/10/15 09:36pm

Would there be anything to test on these to see if they really are an improvement from standard desktop hard drives? I'm curious if they are worth investing in.

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Jon Dillabaugh

Pro Focus LLC | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #2 | 03/10/15 10:11pm

Spec sheet and a scale. They are 5400RPM drives instead of 7200RPM, which logic says will last longer. And... they weigh a lot more. I would hope the weight is added durability.

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