Remarket WD Purple Drives as Backup/archive drives?

MajorMaccas

MajorMaccas

MajorMaccas

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I run a server with a couple of arrays, one main, one backup. The main is WD Reds as you would expect, but the backup array is a couple of 2TB Purple drives in a mirror. They seem perfectly suited to the role; they are optimised for writes for constant surveillance and by the nature of backups they're mostly written to (incremental update nightly) and usually only read when something goes bang. This is a very similar pattern to their intended use of surveillance, only reading from the disc when reviewing footage after an incident.

Ignore the ATA Streaming stuff, they just have that command set enabled in their firmware, but won't use it without getting those commands from the host. https://community.wd.com/t/wd-purple-for-desktop-use/17274/11

They also have drive vibration protection for upto 8 bays, they are intellipower rpm like reds too, and have TLER enabled. Cheaper than reds though, as random reads/writes are pretty bad. But sequential (backup) style writes are a little ahead of reds.

Thoughts?
 
Hey there, The_Sophisticate.

It sounds like a good setup. Basically you've already done quite the research regarding the WD Purple drives and their capabilities and features. You are right that they are not recommended for other purposes besides surveillance, but as you've mentioned what makes them a good surveillance storage solution also benefits your setup having in mind you rarely have to read from them. Don't get me wrong, I'd always recommend 2 more WD Reds for the mirror backup, but since you have the purples and you have no problem with using them with this setup, I guess it's OK to make the most of it with the drives you have.

Cheers!
Boogieman_WD
 
Hey, nice to get a rep reply! I bought the purples alongside my Reds specifically for backup purposes, since they're the same drives with altered firmware geared towards write performance, making them inferior to reds for general purpose storage, but obviously better in a backup scenario where 95% of activity is writes. And when they're about £10 less than the equivalent Reds, that's £20 for a pair in a mirror :D

Just thought you may be missing a potential market for these drives. I'd have thought the NAS/backup market would be bigger than the surveillance market, though I have no stats on which to base that assumption :P
 
It's always nice to see how some people make such an awesome research about the devices they plan on getting. Once again, you did a great job thoroughly checking each of the features and choosing the best budget friendly option while covering the needs for you server, completely.
As for missing on other potential usage for the WD Purple drive, they are indeed OK in your case, but the REDs are the go to drives regarding NAS/RAID environment. However, I really appreciate the feedback and I'll share it with my colleagues.

Cheers! :)
 
It also depends on how you are going to use a backup drive. Some people will write a massive (hundreds of GB) image file every day, week etc. which is what the purple exceeds at - long sequential writes.

Others will have a backup system that backs everything up in real time, with varying file sizes. In this usage the drive will be stopping and starting and dealing with smaller bits of data which it might not be as good at.

Personally I just buy drives with good warranty. I have a pair of WD My passport ultras with 5 year warranty.
 
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In your second case, the purples still outperform the reds. After I setup my two arrays, both MS Storage spaces with equal number of drives/columns in the same mirror config, I did a crystal disk on both at different sizes, and the purples outpaced the reds on all types of writes, and fell behind slightly or kept pace on the reads. I didn't take any screenshots, and both are in use now, and I have since added a nice 50GB SSD write-cache to my red array as that's in general use.

I usually go for the warranty too, though I must have been lucky with the two greens that my reds replaced, from before reds were released, they ran with moderate usage for 5 years before one failed SMART. Quality WD all the way. Backblaze be damned! :D
 
Boogieman_WD said:
It's always nice to see how some people make such an awesome research about the devices they plan on getting. Once again, you did a great job thoroughly checking each of the features and choosing the best budget friendly option while covering the needs for you server, completely.
As for missing on other potential usage for the WD Purple drive, they are indeed OK in your case, but the REDs are the go to drives regarding NAS/RAID environment. However, I really appreciate the feedback and I'll share it with my colleagues.

Cheers! :)
Click to expand...

hi im trying to find out what drive is in the new 8TB My Book
not the duo the new one, which i guess must be a single drive!? is it listed anywhere? like if its a red/purple what :)

sorry for hard question lol i did try a google but no luck :(
 
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