On Tuesday, WD revealed a new brand and color: WD Purple. This line of 3.5-inch HDDs focuses on the mainstream surveillance market for the home and small business, enabling OEMs to build a table-top system consisting of up to eight "Purple" SATA 3 (6 Gbps) hard drives with capacities between 1 TB and 4 TB, and up to 32 HD IP-based cameras. These hard drives are available now with a starting price of $89.99.
"WD optimized the WD Purple line of hard drives for surveillance applications to improve high-definition video playback, and operate in 24x7 workloads of surveillance environments," said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president and general manager of WD's Storage Technology group.
Built to work nonstop, the WD Purple drives are equipped with a number of exclusive HD technologies including AllFrame. When combined with ATA streaming support, this technology helps reduce video footage loss with a special cache policy management technology that helps improve data flow and playback.
The new WD Purple series also includes exclusive firmware upgrades to minimize pixelation and interruptions, and support for Advanced Format Technology, an efficient media format that enables increased areal densities. The rotational speed is controlled by WD's IntelliPower tech, which is a balance of speed, caching algorithms and transfer rate to provide power savings and a solid performance.
"Built for easy integration into new or existing video surveillance systems, WD Purple hard drives are designed and tested to surveillance-class standards and are compatible with industry-leading chassis and chipsets," reads the company's press release.
The WD Purple joins the WD Se, which focuses on the mid-range and small/medium enterprise customers. This group supports more than six drives, up to 64 cameras, and 180 TB per year. The company also offers the WD Re series for high-end and mission critical surveillance. This group supports six or more drive bays, an unlimited number of cameras, and 550 TB per year.
The WD Purple surveillance-class hard drives are now shipping through select distributors and resellers. The 1 TB drive (WD10PURX) costs $89.99, the 2 TB drive (WD20PURX) is $119.99, the 3 TB drive (WD30PURX) is $159.99 and the 4 TB drive (WD40PURX) is $199.99.