WD, a Western Digital company and storage industry player, has introduced the WD Purple hard drives for use in security installations with up to eight hard drives and up to 32 HD cameras. WD Purple hard drives are available in capacities from 1 TB up to 4 TB.

Matt Rutledge, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s Storage Technology group, said:  “WD optimised the WD Purple line of hard drives for surveillance applications to improve high-definition video playback, and operate in the 24/7 workloads of surveillance environments."

Shaun Bowie, managing director of DVS, said: “The WD Purple hard drives have been built specifically for the high intensity workload a surveillance system requires, rather than that of a standard desktop drive, which has been typically designed for eight hours of daily operation. As system workloads and channel counts increase, the performance of dedicated storage drives has become even more crucial. The WD Purple hard drives have been thoroughly tested and show superior performance to competitive surveillance-class brands of storage."

The new WD Purple hard drives have also been extensively tested with Hikvision CCTV systems.  “WD 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," said Ying Yang, director of testing at Hikvision. “An additional benefit of WD Purple drives is they support up to eight drives and 32 HD cameras, so there is the flexibility to expand for future system coverage."

The new hard drives offer low power consumption and many advanced performance features typically reserved for enterprise-level storage, and are optimised for DVR and NVR recording environments.