Storage specialist WD announced the availability of WD Purple, a purpose-built line of 3.5-inch, high-capacity hard drives for surveillance applications.
Designed specifically for video surveillance units, the company’s Purple line of hard drives is aimed at new and existing home and small business security environments with up to eight hard drives and up to 32 high-definition (HD) video cameras, and are available in capacities from 1TB up to 4TB.
“The biggest trend impacting the video surveillance market in recent years has been the transition from analog cameras to network cameras,” Jon Cropley, principal analyst for video surveillance at IT research firm IHS Technology, said in a statement. “With enhanced resolution, wide dynamic range and day/night functionality in cameras increasing, demand for storage solutions capable of accommodating large volumes of video will also increase.”
The hard drives are optimized to withstand the demands of always-on digital personal video recorder (PVR), digital video recorder (DVR) and network video recorder (NVR) recording environments.
Purple hard drives offer low power consumption and a slew of advanced performance features, including Advanced Format Technology (AFT), a media format that enables increased areal densities, adopted by WD and other drive manufacturers to continue growing hard-drive capacities.
“Different from ordinary desktop hard drives designed for eight hours of daily operation, Purple drives have the built-in reliability to operate in Hikvision home and small business system installations so critical video footage is available when it is needed most,” Ying Yang, director of testing at Hikvision, a supplier of video surveillance products and solutions, said in a statement. “An additional benefit of Purple drives is they support up to eight drives and 32 HD cameras so there is the flexibility to expand for future system coverage.”
Another major feature of the drives is AllFrame technology. When combined with streaming support, the technology helps to reduce video footage loss with a proprietary cache policy management technology to help improve data flow and playback.
In addition, Purple includes exclusive firmware upgrades that protect against video pixilation and interruptions within a surveillance system.
“By expanding our product portfolio with Purple, we make it simple for our VARs, integrators and consumers to select the right drive engineered for their application and validated with our industry-leading surveillance partners,” Matt Rutledge, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s storage technology group, said in a statement. “WD optimized the Purple line of hard drives for surveillance applications to improve high-definition video playback, and operate in 24/7 workloads of surveillance environments.”
Available through select distributors and resellers, Purple surveillance-class hard drives are available in capacities from are covered by a three-year limited warranty, with the price for the 3.5-inch 1TB drive (WD10PURX) set at $89.99, the 2TB drive (WD20PURX) at $119.99, the 3TB drive (WD30PURX) listed for $159.99 and the 4TB drive (WD40PURX) listed at $199.99.