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

This came in a pinch for the data I needed to have saved on it.

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 review187.01 MB/s sequential read184.54 MB/s sequential write60.89 MB/s random read109.23 MB/s random writeSeagate ST3000DM001: 3000 GB, 7200 RPM, purchased 2012181.42 MB/s sequential read178.97 MB/s sequential write50.22 MB/s random read90.35 MB/s random writeWestern Digital WD20EARS: 2000 GB, 5400 RPM, purchased 2011112.32 MB/s sequential read107.88 MB/s sequential write31.34 MB/s random read56.34 MB/s random writeWestern Digital WD3200AAKS: 320 GB, 7200 RPM, purchased 200776.86 MB/s sequential read75.57 MB/s sequential write33.68 MB/s random read43.90 MB/s random writeWestern Digital WD2500KS: 250 GB, 7200 RPM, purchased 200563.55 MB/s sequential read62.52 MB/s sequential write31.32 MB/s random read38.16 MB/s random writeIntel SSDSA2M080G2GC: 80 GB, purchased 2009253.07 MB/s sequential read81.98 MB/s sequential write196.70 MB/s random read39.61 MB/s random writeNoise. 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.

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.