Answering Seagate's latest surveillance hard drive (HDD) that was introduced yesterday, WD announced today the availability of the WD Purple HDD, the company's first 3.5-inch, high-capacity internal drive for surveillance applications.
The new WD Purple drive is very much a traditional desktop hard drive that supports the latest SATA3 (6Gbps) standard. However, designed specifically for video surveillance units, the drive can work 24/7 for always-on environments. Most other hard drives are designed to work about 8 hours per day.
WD says the Purple HDD comes equipped with AllFrame and Advanced Format Technology (AFT). The former is a technology helps reduce video footage loss with a proprietary cache policy management technology, and WD also provides firmware upgrades that protect against video pixilation and interruptions within a surveillance system system. The latter allows for more efficient media format that enables increased areal densities.
The new WD Purple HDD is available now in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB capacities that are slated to cost $90, $120, $160, and $200, respectively. All capacities come with a three-year warranty.