WD Purple 2TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD20PURX [Old Version]

Pros: Performance. This is the best-performing mechanical drive I have ever tested. I have four other mechanical HDDs dating back to 2005, including three other Western Digital drives, and this is the best performer across the board. It even beats my old SSD in terms of sequential writes and random writes (likely due to the on-demand nature of TRIM in the SSD): Western Digital WD1003FZEX: 1000 GB, 7200 RPM, this review 187.01 MB/s sequential read 184.54 MB/s sequential write 60.89 MB/s random read 109.23 MB/s random write Seagate ST3000DM001: 3000 GB, 7200 RPM, purchased 2012 181.42 MB/s sequential read 178.97 MB/s sequential write 50.22 MB/s random read 90.35 MB/s random write Western Digital WD20EARS: 2000 GB, 5400 RPM, purchased 2011 112.32 MB/s sequential read 107.88 MB/s sequential write 31.34 MB/s random read 56.34 MB/s random write Western Digital WD3200AAKS: 320 GB, 7200 RPM, purchased 2007 76.86 MB/s sequential read 75.57 MB/s sequential write 33.68 MB/s random read 43.90 MB/s random write Western Digital WD2500KS: 250 GB, 7200 RPM, purchased 2005 63.55 MB/s sequential read 62.52 MB/s sequential write 31.32 MB/s random read 38.16 MB/s random write Intel SSDSA2M080G2GC: 80 GB, purchased 2009 253.07 MB/s sequential read 81.98 MB/s sequential write 196.70 MB/s random read 39.61 MB/s random write Noise. This drive is very quiet. I don’t have any empirical data for noise, but the hard drive activity never became audible above the hum of the CPU fan in my desktop. Heat. This drive is very cool for such a high-performing 7200 RPM drive. Even after a 100 GB transfer that took around 20 minutes, reported temperatures never exceeded 30°C (86°F). Weight. Not that it matters much with internal drives, but this is a very light drive compared to my other 3.5 inch HDDs. The area below the platters on the bottom of the drive is recessed about 3/16 of an inch further than other drives, I assume because it uses one fewer platter. As a result, it feels much lighter. Cons: Price. A 5400 RPM Western Digital Green drive with twice the capacity is available for about the same amount of money. However, using the less-expensive green drives would incur a notable performance decrease. In my testing above, this drive had 66% better transfer rates than a 2-year-old 2TB WD Green for sequential reads and writes and 93% better transfer rates for random reads and writes. So for enterprise tasks, one could argue that the performance of this drive merits the increased cost. For most consumer uses, the 5400 RPM Western Digital Green drives are a better value because they offer at least double the capacity for the same price. The performance loss is not significant considering that they outperform 7200 RPM drives from just a few years earlier. However, for technical or enterprise purposes, the additional throughput can be a real benefit. As someone with I/O-intensive workloads (geographic information systems), this drive offers adequate capacity with exceptional performance. All performance tests were conducted using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 with each drive loaded into the same SATA hot swap bay. Testing was conducted in Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with a socket LGA1156 Intel Lynnfield 860 CPU at 2.8 GHz, 8 GB of RAM, and the Intel P55 3 GB/s SATA controller on the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD4P motherboard.

This drive has been in service for over a year and a half with 3 cameras feeding to it 24/7. One 1080p, one 960p and one 480p camera all 25-30fps. The drive has performed beautifully and is very steady in write performance and temperature (used in a Mac Pro). Loading video, specially while recordings are going, may take a little longer depending on drive activity and file size. For a 5GB 1 hour clip I'm waiting maybe 5 seconds for the file to open and another 5 for playback to be smooth. Slower than you'd see on a traditional drive, keeping in mind this is a 5400rpm drive, but still well worth it. With my configuration it holds a little over two weeks of recordings for all cameras. The drive currently has 15,375 hours on it and the S.M.A.R.T. status and overall drive health is 100%. Not a single bad sector or any signs of wear. I'll replace this down the road only because I'll need a bigger one and even then this will sit in a RAID until it fails. =================== Update, April 2023. The drive just started failing after 8 years of pretty much 24/7 use (69K+ hours on it), supporting 6 HD cameras for the last 5 years. For $70 this was the best money I have ever spent on a hard drive. Ordering a 4TB newer model now, I hope it serves me equally well. These 2TB (WD20PURX), while now an older model, I highly recommend.

Still going no issues.

So far this has been a great hard drive. I purchased to use in my security camera NVR. Arrived packaged sufficiently. Like others I was comparing this relatively new model to the tried and true WD Red. I almost went with the red simply because it had better specs for amount of data being read and written to the drive annually, is that meaningful or not, I don't think so. Honestly though, I really think the two drives are nearly, if not, identical. Sure WD markets this as a surveillance drive (with AllFrame) but I see this as nothing more than marketing fluff and a way for WD to market to another group of users and get more shelf space for their drives. Data is data and nothing more than 0's and 1's, the hard drive couldn't care less if it's video or docs as long as it can handle enough throughput for your application. Besides that rant, I'm very happy with this drive and have almost always had great experiences with WD drives, I can't say the same for Seagate. BTW, I am running this in an Hikvision OEM's NVR and currently it's only supporting 3 - 2 Megapixel cams (approximately 1080p). The drive is recording nearly 24x7 and I have no problems with simulataneous read/writes. This drive's a winner.

If I could give it -5 stars I would. The drive quit working the day after the return window closed. I can't return it. The online store who i bought it from sent me to check on the maker of the drive. Checked on the warranty. No dice. Total trash..

El embalaje excelente el disco duro funciona perfectamente muy satisfecho

Purchased this for my new IP security camera system and opted to save some money and install my own hard drive instead of having the distributor install it. I contacted the distributor to find out which drives they recommend and without hesitation they said they only use WD Purple drives for their installs so ordering this was a no brainer. Amazon's price was pretty much the same as others but I'm so glad I got this from Amazon. When my drive arrived (packaged very well) I could not get my system to boot up. After some testing I could see that the BIOS would recognize the drive but it would fail to initialize and would report an error. Amazon's RMA process is the best. They immediately sent me a replacement and shipping label to return the bad drive. The replacement installed perfectly with no problems. I'm only a couple days into this drive but it works and hopefully the specialized specs will allow it to run cooler, longer, and more reliably store the video data. Unfortunately, I won't really be able to give a proper review until I've had it running for a really long time after going through several overwrite cycles and scouring through video feeds looking for errors. I'll update if I have any problems with the drive but otherwise you can assume that drive is working out perfectly for me.

Make sure you scan your hard drives when they're delivered!! Techs already know to do this, but everyday users might not know how valuable it can be in detecting a damaged drive. I recently bought 2 of these for video file storage on my desktop computer, which they work fantastic for. However, one of the drives failed error surface scan and erase write tests (HD Tune software) when it was received, so it had to be returned. I am fairly confident, however, that the drive was damaged during shipping, and that it probably was not defective from the manufacturer. Amazon combined my hard drive order with a separate order of books without my consent. I had specifically placed the orders separately, about 4 days apart, so that the hard drive would ship all by itself. (I had ordered the first of these 2 drives the same way in early January, so that it would ship all by itself.) The books in this 2nd order were freely slamming around inside the box all during shipping because no packing peanuts were used, only the large airsoft bags. I was p*ssed when I opened the box and saw what they had done. I took 1 star away because Western Digital needs to package their drives in a better self-contained, shock resistant box that doesn't rely on the retailer to safely package. I appreciate the efforts they've made with the packaging so far, but as it stands now, their WD name is riding on the assumption that mail order companies know how to package their hard drives safely....and that's a foolish assumption. I know it's usually frowned upon to score a product based on shipping damage, but this wasn't an extraordinary circumstance with the shipping damage, and the drive's WD packaging should have been able to protect it. Had the WD box been better this damage would very likely not have occurred. In terms of performance, I was worried that these might be a bit slow for desktop use given their intended purpose, but I was definitely wrong. Don't let the slower spindle speed fool you. Just for reference, these are twice as fast as my old 200gb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm, 32mb, EIDE drives at performing everyday tasks like a Synctoy scan of the drive for files that need to be backed-up. I performed identical runs just for comparison and these drives did in 30 minutes what took an hour on those old 200gb drives. These should perform very nicely in most desktop applications. Their burst speeds are exceptional, and I've read that they are even better than the Black WD drives. Again, I HIGHLY advise you to order these drives so that they ship ALONE, and scan them when you receive them. Anything extra inside that shipping box, with the exception of a lightweight cable or two, is going to beat the hell out of it.