HDD for video recording: WD purple or Toshiba

frank10

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Hi, I need an HDD for recording about 6 cameras.
I found:
Toshiba X300 4TB @103€
Toshiba S300 4TB @111€
WD purple 4TB @132€

I know Toshiba (like X300) are great general HDD, but for surveillance I see the purple is a common choice.
But I could find a Toshiba for surveillance S300 at lower price than WD. Or even the X300 could be good?
What do you advice me?
TIA
 

Whoaru99

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I would advise to use a surveillance-rated drive. As long as it is from a reputable brand then the rest is probably six of one, half-dozen of the other.
 

Mike

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I prefer WD Purple and believe it's the drive of choice by many on the forum.
 

Whoaru99

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It's a common drive brand around here, USA that is. Toshiba has a presence, but less so, as I've ever seen. Different pricing, different markets may factor.
 

frank10

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Normally Toshiba is around top quality for HDD, better than WD, maybe equal to HGST-Hitachi that is sadly been absorbed by WD. But I don't think WD will mantain the HGST quality...
Of course it depends also on the model, a WD black will be superior than a Toshiba surveillance...
Anyway, both surveillance models are 5400RPM, whilst the X300 is a 7200RPM, so it should be faster hands down. I'd be tempted by this performance factor and price.
But X300 MTTF is 600,000h, WD purple is 1,000,000h like the S300.
So, I'd think I'm going with the S300.
 

alastairstevenson

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Anyway, both surveillance models are 5400RPM, whilst the X300 is a 7200RPM, so it should be faster hands down. I'd be tempted by this performance factor and price.
When the sustained transfer speed is 100+MB/s the small reduction in rotational latency isn't really a factor when you may be writing no more than 50Mbps to the drive.
The 'surveillance' drives firmware is optimised for the type of work that continuous video streams generate, as opposed to the random, variable work that drives in a multi-purpose environment are presented with.
Just a thought.
 

frank10

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Yes, true.
But when you have like 6xstreams recording and you want to see some events triggered, so contemporaneous sequential writing and random reading, well, maybe a 7200RPM could make a better job.
 

civic17

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WD Purple and Seagate SkyHawk are the surveillance grade hard drives available.
 

Whoaru99

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Here (North America) yes WD and Seagate are big players. Since the OP quoted Euro price it could be Toshiba is more common in that region. The Toshiba S300 is a surveillance-grade drive. On quick perusal specs seem on par with or maybe even better than Purple in some cases.

Toshiba - Internal Hard Drives - S300
 
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