WD Purple for general computing

[mono]

I am in the market for some extra storage as my 240GB SSD + 1TB HDD doesn't leave much free space nowadays.

I was looking both in the new and used markets and found a pretty unbeatable deal on a WD Purple 10TB (WD101PURZ) for 178 EUR, which is the best deal I can find per TB for any new drive and only a little more than the best deals on the used market doing 15 EUR per TB.

I was wondering whether the WD Purple is a wise choice for general storage and some games as I have read that these drives are specifically optimized for surveillance and do not have the same level of error checking than even basic desktop drives. That said it should be a pretty fast drive - 7200rpm rated for 24/7 operation, so I would expect it to be reliable.

Any thoughts on this? Because any other new drives don't even come close to this price per TB and I would probably be going into the used market with no warranty.

[kelvinhall05]

I think it should be fine, but 15 euro/TB would mean you could get a 10TB drive for 150 euro, no?

 

I'm not entirely sure if the drives being for "surveillance" is just marketing or if it actually changes anything, so I can't comment on the drive itself.

[ARikozuM]

If you're getting it for cheap, go ahead. The Purple is meant for constant writing, according to WD. 

 

Personally, you have much better options with HGST's Deskstar or Seagate's Barracuda. 

[homeap5]

10 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

I'm not entirely sure if the drives being for "surveillance" is just marketing or if it actually changes anything, so I can't comment on the drive itself.

I think it's 90% marketing, but as I've read - there are some differences:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/surveillance-hard-drive-performance,3831-2.html

They wrote that this model has "lack of Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF), a technology that overcomes the effects of vibration introduced by other drives in an enclosure". Whatever it means.

[Bramimond]

If the data you want to put on this drive is somewhat important, do not cheap out on it. Or let experience be a very cruel teacher. If a HDD is cheaper than expected, it is so for a reason. Current market price for 10TB is 300€-350€.

[ARikozuM]

4 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

I think it's 90% marketing, but as I've read - there are some differences:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/surveillance-hard-drive-performance,3831-2.html

They wrote that this model has "lack of Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF), a technology that overcomes the effects of vibration introduced by other drives in an enclosure". Whatever it means.

Surveillance systems for small business and homes usually depend only on a single drive and cloud sync. This is quite possibly the worst WD drive after the Green. 

[mono]

38 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

I think it should be fine, but 15 euro/TB would mean you could get a 10TB drive for 150 euro, no?

 

I'm not entirely sure if the drives being for "surveillance" is just marketing or if it actually changes anything, so I can't comment on the drive itself.

No, the used market around here is pretty weak for HDDs so I could get like 2TB drive for 30EUR, or a 4TB toshiba dell branded for 65EUR. I'd personally rather pay a little more per TB to have a fresh drive with a warranty.

I'd really rather go for something like 3 to 6 TB ideally as I have no clue how would I fill a 10TB drive, but new ones at those sizes have prices of 25 EUR/TB and up.

 

[homeap5]

51 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Surveillance systems for small business and homes usually depend only on a single drive and cloud sync. This is quite possibly the worst WD drive after the Green. 

Well, blue/green are not bad drives, they just a little slower. But they silent and because they do not winning speed competitions, they may in fact last longer.

[ARikozuM]

32 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

Well, blue/green are not bad drives, they just a little slower. But they silent and because they do not winning speed competitions, they may in fact last longer.

The aggressive head parking is an issue in most consumer applications. 

[Kedohawyr]

The Purple is probably the only drive I wouldn't recommend for home use. It's more or less a Red with some very funky firmware (not just lower timing settings like the Red) that makes it less then ideal for smaller files and bad for desktop workloads overall. While it could probably work without issue as a drive for storing your media (videos preferably, I'd be wary of how well it would handle photo indexing) I would not use it for storing a Steam library. Get a BarraCuda if you need a really cheap drive to store all your games.