Western Digital 8TB WD Purple Surveillance Internal Hard Drive HDD - SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD85PURZ

I recently purchased ten Western Digital 12TB WD Purple Pro surveillance drives for an extensive security project. Out of the box, I did encounter an unexpected issue: two of the drives were dead on arrival. However, I promptly reached out to customer support and received replacements without hassle.Once installed, the drives performed flawlessly. The WD Purple Pro series is specifically engineered for surveillance environments, and it shows—these drives run quietly and efficiently, handling constant writing and heavy workloads with ease. Recording high-definition video streams from multiple cameras has been seamless, and the storage capacity is ample for long-term retention.While initial failures were disappointing, the quick and professional replacement process reassured me of Western Digital’s commitment to customer service. The performance, reliability, and peace of mind these drives provide far outweigh the minor setback at the start.

I bought this beast to drop into my Amcrest NVR system because apparently, my house needed the same level of surveillance as Fort Knox. Spoiler alert: it works perfectly — and now my house is basically the Truman Show, but with better resolution.🎥 Why I Love This Drive:12 Terabytes of "You Saw Nothing, Officer"Seriously, it holds weeks of 4K footage from multiple cameras, including the one pointed at my driveway that’s mostly squirrels doing parkour.Purpose-Built for ParanoiaDesigned for 24/7/365 surveillance workloads. No naps. No coffee breaks. Just pure, tireless storage of every Amazon delivery and mysterious leaf blower incident.Plug-and-Paranoia InstallationInstalled in my Amcrest NVR like it was born there. No firmware drama, no compatibility tantrums. Just silence... and a blinking light of judgment.Cooler Than Your ExRuns quiet, stays cool, and doesn’t randomly ghost you like a desktop hard drive shoved into a job it wasn’t hired for.512MB Cache = Smooth PlaybackRewinding suspicious backyard activity in crisp HD has never been this satisfying. Even if it was just a raccoon again.🧠 Final Thoughts:If you're serious about home security (or just want to capture footage of your neighbor stealing your trash cans), this is the drive. It’s like a security guard that never blinks and never asks for a raise.Buy it. Install it. Sleep easy — unless you're worried what it might've caught you doing

We've been using these now for 3 months with our Ubiquiti/Unifi surveillance camera setup. We've had zero failures and very quick loading time when accessing older clips.

WD has been in the drive business for ages. Drive is quiet, installs easily and works well in my NVREdit: so after being installed for less than a month, drive starting to make some noise. An intermittent squeaking almost like a faint beep. To me sounds like something’s going on in the head as though it hit bad sectors on the drive platters. I turned off the recording feature on the NVR and the noise went away so now I know it’s not the machine itself….. bad sectors in less than a month and the drive was barely half written on…. I reformatted the drive and now it’s quiet again at the cost of losing all my data. Am I going to have to do this every month? ….. I chose this drive because of WD reputation in the HDD business, now that thought went down the drain…..Edit: after formatting the drive, noise went away for a few days, started to do the same thing again…. Returning this and ordering from different major manufacturer

This worked. Got a refurb seagate and it was junk. It works great.

Excellent for NVR use!I record multiple security cameras 24/7, some through WiFi and others through CAT6 for high resolution.Has no speed problems keeping up with recording multiple cams at same time.Storage capacity gives a minimum of 60-days record time for all cams... I run at max video resolution, so I could probably bump that up to 120+ days if needed by reducing video resolution a little.Previously I used just a standard HD in my NVR which was a bit noisy, always ran very hot and eventually failed after 3 years.Been using this WD Purple drive for a few months now.... completely silent and stays at room temperature!Absolutely pleased!

Performs well but it is noiser than smaller capacity drives. Seems like all the bigger drives are like that. It's the loudest part of my NVR now.

I use this to hold Security camera recordings. It easily handles quite a few cameras recording 24/7if you need a good, solid durable drive, this should do well for you.This is the second one I have now (I expanded my initial setup for longer archiving) and it has been great.