is it necassary to use Surveillance HDD vs the standard desktop drive?

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dannieboiz

Getting the hang of it
May 13, 2015
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The purist would say yes but I started with a bunch of desktop drives, 8 of them to be exact. I used them cause I had them sitting around. I only started to replace them with WD Red because I needed more storage. Ran like a champ for 4 years + years. Some even longer. I'm @ 50% replacement now and re-purpose those drives for other things and still going. Some are reaching 6 years old. I may be lucky. Ironically i manage a fleet of NAS with 120 WD Red and they fail they have a 10% failure.

Need to be a new HDD for an NVR and the prices are about 20-30 differrence. Storage price drop all the time.
 
Not needed no - you can use any old hard drive you want.

That said I recently tested some drives performance to compare normal drives vs the WD Purple specifically. The normal drive beat the Purple drive in every single test by 10-25% except for one, random writes, which is what your surveillance systems is doing non stop. In that test the Purple drive was TWICE as fast as the normal drive. I knew there were firmware differences but they really stood out when testing. This is how they get the advertised "less dropped frames" and the like I assume and I can see how it would help. It would also make a horrible day to day drive for a computer due to the slowness at everything else.
 
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Thanks for the info, I ordered a 4tb Purple drive last night before reading this. Maybe I should cancel it and save myself $40 or get two 3TB regular drive. :P
 
for a max of 4 cameras that do continuous record, does it still make sense to pay the premium? Two 3Tb Greens are $85ea at the moment
 
Good lord not Greens! Anything other than those, they have to be the worst drives ever made I swear. When I said above "use any old hard drive you want" I should have specified "other than WD Greens!" Black, Red, Seagate Surveillance, just not Green.

(I've had some issues with them as you might be able to tell) :D
 
Razer said:
Good lord not Greens! Anything other than those, they have to be the worst drives ever made I swear. When I said above "use any old hard drive you want" I should have specified "other than WD Greens!" Black, Red, Seagate Surveillance, just not Green.

(I've had some issues with them as you might be able to tell) :D
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LOL ok, back to the shopping list. I can live with Reds
 
dont use regular drives, i was getting roughly a year out of them before they died (standard seagate consumer drives, went through 3 of them). moved on to reds last feb, so far so good. im using BI and recording 24/7 so they are constantly writing.

+1 on the greens, nothing but issues with those, never had one die on me, but they cause to many other issues. mine have been relegated to backup duty only.
 
dannieboiz said:
for a max of 4 cameras that do continuous record, does it still make sense to pay the premium? Two 3Tb Greens are $85ea at the moment
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If the drive is going to be used in an NVR I would go with WD Purple drives. If you are going to use a PC, I recommend a regular HD for the operating system and a completely separate WD purple drive dedicated for surveillance video storage. Just my $0.02
 
We briefly talked about this in another thread - I love my WD blacks!

5 year warranty and the highest performance. I was recently getting a couple of old computers ready to donate and one of them had a 1 TB Caviar Black as a second storage drive, which was purchased in 2011. I hadn't used the computer for quite sometime and it wouldn't recognize this drive. I downloaded the WD Utility and it indicated FAIL for the Smart Status.

Quick check of the serial number on their website indicated I had 14 days left on the warranty! Did an advanced RMA and I expect the new drive this week, and they are paying for return shipping of the old one. I would also be willing to bet I will get something better than the 1 TB that failed

Edited to add that I just got my replacement drive from Western Digital. I had a 1 TB drive that failed and then sent me a 2 TB for replacement :)
 
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Here is another thread of "Lets save $20 today to be pist tomorrow when I have dropped frames or corrupt video"...

I understand saving money on some things in life - but I am always blown away by what some people choose to save money on. If you have your cameras for pet cams, or flower growing cams - okay.... But if you are using this for "true" security and monitoring then please explain to me HOW and WHY you would justify saving 5-10% on a 100-200 purchase....

Don't return your purchase or cancel it - You have purchased something that was DESIGNED for what your intend to use it for... SMH :shame:
 
I had great luck with my black drives too and they were great performers for me. Pretty sure I still have one in my desktop at home for backup purposes. Moved on to SSDs now though.

Today when I build a basic NVR I usually start with an off the shelf system that has a 500gb or 1tb drive in it. I then install a 250gb Samsung 850 evo drive in it and clone the OS over to the Samsung and afterwards format the OEM drive for video storage. I then add a 3 for 4tb Purple drive and I'm good to go. Used to use the smaller 120 SSDs but prices are so low might as well get the 250 now. I like this as the OS SSD drive is basically now good forever and if a video drive fails it will still record to something until I get the bad drive swapped out. And I do not lose my OS. My NVRs are under 1k each and perfect for my needs this way.

I also build them completely at times as I did earlier today, as I had parts around that made me building vs buying a good deal. Have all the parts needed for two more - after that back to buying as it is just simpler. I do love building computers though so some times I do it just because I want to!
 
zero-degrees said:
Here is another thread of "Lets save $20 today to be pist tomorrow when I have dropped frames or corrupt video"...

I understand saving money on some things in life - but I am always blown away by what some people choose to save money on. If you have your cameras for pet cams, or flower growing cams - okay.... But if you are using this for "true" security and monitoring then please explain to me HOW and WHY you would justify saving 5-10% on a 100-200 purchase....

Don't return your purchase or cancel it - You have purchased something that was DESIGNED for what your intend to use it for... SMH :shame:
Click to expand...

What are you even ranting about? It's $181 inc taxes for me. My red is working fine. Probably just a fluke that one died. It happens, drives sometimes die.
 
Razer said:
I had great luck with my black drives too and they were great performers for me. Pretty sure I still have one in my desktop at home for backup purposes. Moved on to SSDs now though.

Today when I build a basic NVR I usually start with an off the shelf system that has a 500gb or 1tb drive in it. I then install a 250gb Samsung 850 evo drive in it and clone the OS over to the Samsung and afterwards format the OEM drive for video storage. I then add a 3 for 4tb Purple drive and I'm good to go. Used to use the smaller 120 SSDs but prices are so low might as well get the 250 now. I like this as the OS SSD drive is basically now good forever and if a video drive fails it will still record to something until I get the bad drive swapped out. And I do not lose my OS. My NVRs are under 1k each and perfect for my needs this way.

I also build them completely at times as I did earlier today, as I had parts around that made me building vs buying a good deal. Have all the parts needed for two more - after that back to buying as it is just simpler. I do love building computers though so some times I do it just because I want to!
Click to expand...
Yup ssd is a must. I have a drawer full of them 120gbs
 
@Warptrooper you do realize that you are responding to a thread that was last used in 2015, right?
 
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