Western Digital 4TB WD Purple Surveillance Internal Hard Drive HDD - SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD40PURZ

Best drive for security camera footage storage. I've had mine in constant use for 6 years and it's still going strong.

Bought one of these for my surveillance DVR in July 2018 and it was still going strong when the DVR was replaced in November 2022. New DVR had Seagate Skyhawk that died shortly after 2 years so going back to WD Purple.

Being a Fan of Western Digital I decided to give their Surveillance Hard drive a try.. I currently have 9 cameras running constantly at my home to keep my property protected. And I had a 1tb drive on my system and had only 4 days of backup which these days is NOTHING.. I now have one day over 2 weeks or backup.. Totally going to upgrade to a 12 tb once I can get it. worth its weight in gold.. Just remember you're not going to be able to do a visual inventory of your stuff every day but with a good NVR and a large hard drive you will be able to periodically check your stuff and notice differences and catch what is going on. The larger the Hard Drive the better chance you have to keep a good eye on your stuff and have evidence in case of a situation. My situation is odd due to having a multitude of resolutions. Honestly All of my cameras (except 2) are from the Same Manufacture and I love them.. Probably shouldn't mention S3VC cameras but sorry gotta say excellent cameras for any good NVR (AMCREST) My cameras have resolutions from 1080 to 5 mp cameras(oldest camera is 720 ). Including a great camera from FOSCAM (which I didn't know it had audio) So you may have 4 or 6 cameras which most people get Standard resolution cameras (which are fine if your just wanting to see what happened without enough resolution to see who it was in most cases) I go 1080 or higher just so I can get good visuals of who or what happened with better ability to see what your protecting. So in a situation with 6 cameras at Standard Definition you will have at more than a month of recording easy. This drive is designed for Security camera recording and should last longer than a regular system drive. Will recommend to anyone who is in the market to buy a hard drive.

Great product! Great price!

Hard Drive is OK, but there are generally some problems.Hard Drive write "speed" is not connected to writing, it is connected to cash memory.In fact, when you see that write is done, it is probably stored in cash memory on disk, and when you continue to use another things in OS it continues to write on disk.Similar with CPU "speed", it is more connected to core numbers than to GHz.Uncheck "Enable write cashing on the device", and you will see true writing speed. Slow.All in all, a lot of fakes today.

I purchased this as a data storage/backup drive for my desktop PC. My main drive is a1TB NVME drive. The data drive I use for movies, songs, and backups and digital images. Since I am not booting with the drive I don't care about raw performance, nor will I pay for it. With that said I am VERY happy with this drive. It only spins at 5400 RPM, so the access time is slightly slower, but it makes no difference to me. Maximum transfer rate is nearly 200MB/sec. High capacity drives have dense platters and are able to pull data faster.I am a Nazi for eliminating extraneous sound and used to keep my drives inside enclosures to reduce sound. My quietest drive to date is the Samsung HD 503HI, and this is even quieter. I have several large case fans spinning slowly and if I turn them off I can ever so slightly hear a faint humming or click, but otherwise I hear NOTHING.This is my first WD drive (have always used Samsung). I cannot speak to the drive's reliability as I've only had it for one month. It is labeled for "Surveillance," so if it's meant to be running 24/7- 365 it is meant to get use in commercial/industrial environments.I think everyone with a desktop PC should adopt this system. It is very easy to backup anything important- save it to your C: drive as well as your backup E: drive or whatever. If one your main drive goes kaput you have the backup to pull your saved data from. You can use flash drives for additional redundancy and portability, but in my experience they are not so reliable.

I have a Lorex NVR for recording security footage. After just a few months the included HHD in the unit died without warning. It was a complete crash. The device was under warranty and the company would not replace the drive, but rather said they would replace the entire unit with a used/refurbished unit and that it would takes weeks. I decided to keep the device and just replace the drive myself so I wasn't without a security system for that long. This drive was on sale and is more than twice the capacity of the other brand of drive it replaced. It is extremely fast when searching for past security footage. If you are looking to replace a security system drive be sure to get one that is properly rated for this task. You can't just use any off the shelf hard drive or you will run into serious issues. These specialty drives exist for a reason, and this brand and model have done an excellent job so far, recording 24/7 for over a year now.

excellent product,