Western Digital announced on April 5 the availability of a new 10TB model in its line of WD Purple hard drives for surveillance applications. It joins eight other models currently on the market spanning storage capacities between 500GB and 8TB. They’re designed to be in use 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and support a workload rate of up to 180TB per year. Each WD Purple drive can support up to 64 high-definition cameras on a single surveillance system as well.
The WD Purple family consists of 5,400-rpm, 3.5-inch storage solutions that connect to a SATA 3 (6Gbps) or older interface. Their overall dimensions are 1.03 (H) × 5.79 (L) × 4.0 (W) inches with a weight ranging from 0.99 to 1.65 pounds, depending on the model. Here are the individual specs and their pricing:
| Capacity | Cache | Sustained Speed |
Read/Write Power Use |
Price | |
| WD100PURZ: | 10TB | 256MB | 210MB/s | 6.2 watts | $400 |
| WD80PUZX: | 8TB | 128MB | 178MB/s | 6.4 watts | $284 |
| WD60PURX: | 6TB | 64MB | 175MB/s | 5.3 watts | $250 |
| WD50PURX: | 5TB | 64MB | 170MB/s | 5.3 watts | $200 |
| WD40PURX: | 4TB | 64MB | 150MB/s | 5.1 watts | $140 |
| WD30PURX: | 3TB | 64MB | 145MB/s | 4.4 watts | $105 |
| WD20PURX: | 2TB | 64MB | 145MB/s | 4.4 watts | $80 |
| WD10PURX: | 1TB | 64MB | 110MB/s | 3.3 watts | $60 |
| WD05PURX: | 500GB | 64MB | 110MB/s | 3.3 watts | $50 |
“Our new 10TB drive inherits the high performance, reliability, and endurance qualities of our WD Purple family, with maximum capacity to offer VARs, integrators, and consumers a 4K-ready solution for current and next-generation surveillance systems,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing.
The WD Purple drives rely on the company’s proprietary IntelliSeek technology for optimal performance. According to Western Digital, this tech reduces possible damage and early wear-and-tear by calculating optimal seek speeds, which in turn lowers power consumption, noise, and vibration. This helps sustain their promoted 24/7 constant-use capability.
And that is essentially what makes WD Purple drives different than the standard desktop hard drive: their specific, optimized design for DVR and NVR security systems that are in constant use. WD Purple drives support three times the workload rating of desktop drives, Western Digital claims, and are backed by the company’s proprietary AllFrame 4K technology so that missed frames and lost footage aren’t issues.
“AllFrame 4K technology enhances ATA streaming support to help reduce video frame loss with proprietary cache policy management technology to improve overall data flow and playback, Western Digital said. “WD Purple 10TB HDDs include exclusive firmware enhancements that help protect against video pixilation and interruptions within a surveillance system.”
Finally, the new WD Purple 10TB model is based on Western Digital’s third-gen HelioSeal tech. This enables the company to cram more storage platters and read/write heads inside the hard drive package by using helium to reduce the amount of turbulence caused by storage platters spinning in close proximity to each other. The tech also reduces power consumption because the platters spin more easily in a helium-filled environment.
The new 10TB model is available now through Western Digital’s online shop.
