What Hard Drive do we recommend for your CCTV system?

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Customers often ask us which hard drives we recommend and why. This article will explore the Western Digital Purple and Toshiba S300 drives that we supply and hopefully answer all the questions you have about the HDDs.

Western Digital Purple​

We’ll start with Western Digital Purple. We have been offering these for over 6 years now and so are most familiar with these products. They have been specifically designed for use in surveillance applications so users can have peace of mind in knowing that these drives have been created with their system needs at the forefront. As well as this they boast a low failure rate which we can confirm, in all the years of selling these drives we have has very little fail.

There are two different types of Western Digital Purple Hard Drives; WD Purple Drives and WD Purple Pro Drives. As the name suggests the Pro drives are a higher-spec version of the widely popular HDDs and would be recommended for use in system applications that use AI-enabled cameras and recorders, video analytics servers and deep learning solutions. Please see the comparison table below for differences between the two drive types:

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Toshiba S300 Surveillance​

Earlier this year we introduced Toshiba to our hard drive offering. Like the WD Purple HDDs, the Toshiba S300 has been built to meet the high demands of surveillance recording. These drives are able to support up to 64 high-resolution and have been rigorously tested to ensure 24/7 reliability and performance.

The S300 drives also have two versions; the Toshiba S300 and Toshiba S300 Pro. Again the Pro drives are slightly higher spec and have a higher capacity and are built for speed, capacity and longer content retention. Please see the comparison table below for the differences between the two drives:

Now we have introduced both brands here is a side-by-side comparison:

1 - Cache size is different depending on the product. (WD10PURZ = 64MB, WD22PURZ = 256MB, WD30PURZ = 64MB, WD42PURZ = 256MB, WD62PURZ = 128MB, WD84PURZ = 128MB, WD102PURZ = 256MB)
1 - All except 1TB which has 5700RPM
2 - 1TB and 2TB support up to 32 cameras
3 - Cache size is different depending on the product. (HDWV110UZSVA = 64MB, HDWT720UZSVA = 128MB, HDWT840UZSVA = 256MB, HDWT860UZSVA = 256MB)
4 - All except 1TB which has 300,000
5 - All except 1TB which has an operating temperature of 0°C ~ 65°C

1 - 8TB, 10TB and 12TB = 256MB. 14TB, 18TB, 22TB = 512MB.
2 - 8TB and 10TB = 2,000,000 the rest are as above in table.

Please note: We have recently found that the WD Purple 18TB and 22TB hard drives are not compatible with Hikvision NVRs (3rd January 2023)​

Costs​

When selecting an item to purchase there are many factors that will be considered this is not only limited to the specification but also the costs, especially at the moment. For this reason, we have also carried out a cost comparison for you.

Finally ​

With the knowledge above you can now make an informed decision on which hard drive you would prefer for your system. We have sold the Western Digital drives for a lot longer than Toshiba and so can speak more on the performance and reliability of these drives, however when comparing specs and through doing our own research the Toshiba drives appear just as reliable. Overall just from looking at the above comparisons the Toshiba drives come in slightly cheaper than the Western Digital Purple, however, there are not as many drive options in the Toshiba range.

Now you know what we offer you may be wondering how you decide on the size of HDD you'll need for your system.
We recommend using the Western Digital Storage Calculator.
Just fill out each section, number of cameras, resolution, video format and quality, fps, days of storage required etc and then calculate.
Below we have given some examples for you to get a rough idea of storage needs for certain applications.

We hope that this is useful in helping you select your hard drives, please contact us if you have any further questions.​