Red VS purple

[zaniix]

I was just wondering if anyone has had any experience with these WD Purple drives

I typically use WD Reds in my NAS setup, but sometimes I see deals on these new purple drives and I was wondering how they compare. Is there any reason not to use a Purple in a NAS or a RAID?

 

[Trimlock]

There are quite a few reasons to not use Purple drives for a NAS environment unless you are using the NAS for video surveillance.

Also the REDs are good for NAS if you intend to use RAID along with continuous data writes/reads. If not there are other cheaper alternatives you could use to get bulk storage.

 

[Abhaxus]

Purple drives are designed to stream continuously, disregarding absolute data integrity. Not a good idea for anything but video.

 

[tankman1989]

I have 3 red's - 2 4TB and a 1TB 2.5". I love them and they are rock solid. The 4's are in a NAS that is on 24/7 and is a personal storage device so I'm the only one using it.

Transfer rates on the 1TB seem on par with my WD black RE2/4's and response time after being in standby is not very noticable.

 

[zaniix]

I have 3 red's - 2 4TB and a 1TB 2.5". I love them and they are rock solid. The 4's are in a NAS that is on 24/7 and is a personal storage device so I'm the only one using it.

Transfer rates on the 1TB seem on par with my WD black RE2/4's and response time after being in standby is not very noticable.

yeah I use the reds and love them, I would even say they are as good as blacks for data drives in most use cases.

I just wondered what made the purples different
So far all I get is well they are designed for continuous streaming etc, but that is all marketing. I was looking for something more technical.

 

[tankman1989]

yeah I use the reds and love them, I would even say they are as good as blacks for data drives in most use cases.

I just wondered what made the purples different
So far all I get is well they are designed for continuous streaming etc, but that is all marketing. I was looking for something more technical.

Well the only thing that I could see, from my limited HD firmware & platter design POV, is that maybe there is some kind of auto defragmentation protocol built in. This would allow for easier streaming of larger files.

I guess it could be tested by running identical operations on two machines and then after awhile analyze both disks for fragmentation and see if the purple needs less defragg'in.

Glad youy like your reds. I was really hesetant to buy them but as a sole user, I figured that paying close to 40-60% more for a RE2 or RE4 might not be wise. I also liked the 3 year warranty (although I could have sworn it said 5 on the website when I bought it... Just found out the other day when comparing the red vs red pro...)

I hate when the sales site lists stuff like that with hopes that people won't catch it and when they do they are usually SOL.

 

[zaniix]

Well the only thing that I could see, from my limited HD firmware & platter design POV, is that maybe there is some kind of auto defragmentation protocol built in. This would allow for easier streaming of larger files.

I guess it could be tested by running identical operations on two machines and then after awhile analyze both disks for fragmentation and see if the purple needs less defragg'in.

Glad youy like your reds. I was really hesetant to buy them but as a sole user, I figured that paying close to 40-60% more for a RE2 or RE4 might not be wise. I also liked the 3 year warranty (although I could have sworn it said 5 on the website when I bought it... Just found out the other day when comparing the red vs red pro...)

I hate when the sales site lists stuff like that with hopes that people won't catch it and when they do they are usually SOL.

If money wasn't an issue I would use the Red Pros, but I dont think the cost is justified.

What I like about the RED over the Black drives is that a RED will give up on reading a bad sector much sooner which makes recovery software quicker. Black drives take like 30 seconds before they give on and when trying to recover a large disk this can take days to run and sometimes prevent it from finishing. I think the RED only gives a bad sector 7 seconds before it moves on.

 

[drescherjm]

I just wondered what made the purples different
So far all I get is well they are designed for continuous streaming etc, but that is all marketing. I was looking for something more technical.

The time allowed to recover an unreadable sector is even shorter for purple drives (not sure if you can change the default). The idea is in a video severance appliance a few corrupt bits will not hurt the video stream too much but write (or even a read) taking more than a second (or so) can cause lost data.