14 TB Western Digital Purple surveillance HDD hits lowest Amazon price in 30 days

[Redaktion]

Introduced on the market at the end of November 2019, the 14 TB Western Digital Purple HDD is optimized for surveillance tasks with design traits that ensure long-term reliability while in use 24/7. With a list price of US$319.99 and a mid-2021 peak of almost US$600, the WD140PURZ model retails now at US$279.99.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/14-TB-Western-Digital-Purple-surveillance-HDD-hits-lowest-Amazon-price-in-30-days.700657.0.html

[NikoB]

This model only has a read level without errors of 1 bit to the 10^14th power - this means that even when reading at the capacity size of this disk, WD makes a spontaneous error in the data. It does not have auto-parking heads and cannot be turned on manually. This drive only makes sense as part of a RAID on a NAS away from people walking, running, jumping, or children and animals. Somewhere in the back room without vibrations. Otherwise, the consequences will be very quick and sad ...

[Codrut Nistor]

Lack of auto-parking heads in a hard drive manufactured after 2000??? Well, even this way could be useful inside a desktop PC or in an external rack that doesn't get moved around much.

[NikoB]

Lack of parking is a pure evil today with the new heads hovering much closer to the surface.

I have already run into problems on a 1.5 year old 2TB Purple in my desktop, precisely because even minimal walking around the desktop in the room gradually leads to sticky heads, even when the disk is not used 90% of the time. Autoparking every 2-3 minutes has saved my drives many times in critical situations.

At the same time, hardware and software manufacturers have not yet learned the trick of manually disabling disks in the OS. And so that they do not start even when the computer starts from the BIOS - i.e. only a manual switch-on command (as with a mechanical power switch). It is strange that this has not been done in 30 years. Often a person needs several drives, but at a particular moment an SSD may be enough for him, but at some point without any poking he may need all 6-8 drives in the tower. And because of the stupid software and hardware, you can't turn these drives off mechanically until you need them, so that nothing can turn them on without your manual command. Moreover, even mechanical SATA power switches in the 5.25" bay for 6-12 drives are not available on the market, that's what's amazing...

The only way to protect the disk from spontaneous sticking and clicks of the heads on the surface of the platters is auto-parking. But in this series, it is deliberately disabled and there is no way to turn it on.

Therefore, the Purple series in the living room is your worst choice.
This series is only for NAS and back rooms where no one walks for months. With a stable vibrational environment.

In terms of reliability, the Toshiba MG series are cheaper than Purple in our stores, but they are faster and have 1 bit of error per 10^15 degree. At the same time, they have a vibration control mechanism. And the resource of the heads is 3 times higher per one year of use - 550TB, instead of the miserable 180TB of the Purple/Red series.
--
If you're buying drives for a NAS, it's better to choose the Toshiba MG series. they always come with a 5 year warranty as opposed to Purple/Red's 3 years and are much more reliable in terms of correcting read/write errors. Although there is no custom parking there either - it is done no more than once every 15 minutes.

[Liljo4559]

I don't suppose you realized having a color code system suggests the need to use the color corresponding to the specific hard drive need. I use purple coded drive in surveillance recording devices all the time and haven't had any problems at all. One or more cameras are being recorded at any given time whether it's on DVR or server... It's why none parking heads AREN'T a problem what so ever, heads on purple label are designed to be constantly moving vs normal desktop user function.

[NikoB]

securedatarecovery.com/blog/how-long-do-hard-drives-last
Again, Toshiba leads the report in terms of fault tolerance.

[NikoB]

The problem is that people don't have a choice - there are very few CMR and head parking for hdd left with a 3+ year warranty. That's why even I took Purple to the tower when the old 11 year old WD Green 2TB with 5 year warranty died, which went through such a thing that cannot be described.

Please note from the link I indicated above that the specialists of this company came to the conclusion that disks manufactured before 2015 are more reliable than disks manufactured after 2015. This is generally confirmed by higher density and heads hovering closer to the platters and therefore less fail-safe.

[Codrut Nistor]

securedatarecovery.com/blog/how-long-do-hard-drives-last
Again, Toshiba leads the report in terms of fault tolerance.

So my 4 TB Toshiba MC04ACA400E (94G1K06BFLSA) was an inspired choice. Almost 67k working hours ago. Sure, less than 1,300 start/stops also help. Noisy, but so damn reliable. Has 8 reallocated sectors that have been there for ages (wife decided it would be a good idea to use the broom behind my PC while it was on, although I told her not to do so, and she  OBVIOUSLY bumped into the power cable, which led to an electrical shock/power down while the HDD was writing data). On the other hand, I got this Toshiba after buying a WD Black. That one was also 4 TB, Enterprise Edition. Can't remember the model number. Anyway, the thing is that one died after less than 10 hours. It wasn't only my problem with handling or power quality, because it looks like that model was a disaster. I tried to get it replaced with another one, but nobody was importing that anymore, so I got my cash back and purchased the Toshiba instead.