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Western Digital today unveiled the latest member of its 26TB club, the 26TB WD Purple Pro HDD. This is the company’s highest-to-date hard drive designed for what it calls “smart video solutions“, such as network video recorders (NVRs), Video Management Systems (VMSs), or any video analytics software.
Prior to this, Western Digital, on the heels of leaving the NAND flash memory market, already announced the 26TB WD Red Pro for NAS servers.
26TB WD Purple Pro: A top-capacity enterprise-class hard drive for video-related applications
The WD Purple Pro is not a new hard drive. It was first announced in mid-2021, initially with 8TB, as the high-end version of the WD Purple, which came out in 2015. Over the years, its capacity has slowly increased by a factor of 2TB. The latest 26TB version announced today likely won’t be the last.
Regardless of the amount of storage space, the hard drive itself has remained the same physically. It’s a standard 3.5-inch (desktop) drive that features SATA 3 (6 Gbps). On the inside, it sports the traditional Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) technology, making its massive capacity even more impressive.
Western Digital says the WD Purple Pro is built on its 11-disk platform to deliver “the performance and durability needed for large-scale video storage”. The drive is designed with the company’s ePMR technology, which is said to be “ideal for AI-enabled recorders, video analytics appliances, deep-learning servers, cloud-based storage, and demanding environments.”
Other highlights of the WD Purple Pro include:
- Designed with tarnish-resistant components for harsh environments and with additional robustness for multi-bay enclosures
- AllFrame AI technology to support up to 64 single-stream HD cameras or 32 AI streams for deep learning analytics and reducing frame drops
- Workload rating up to 550TB/year to keep up with 24/7 data capture and analysis demands
- Includes Western Digital Device Analytics to provide drive health management features for compatible recorders and video management systems
- Built with OptiNAND flash-enabled technology
Like previous models, the new 26TB WD Purple Pro features 7200 RPM with 512MB of cache memory to deliver sustained copy speeds of close to 300MB/s.
According to Western Digital, the new drive is compatible with all RAID configurations and JBOB. It has enough performance to handle up to 64 video streams simultaneously and an MTBF (mean time between failure) rating of up to 2.5 million hours. It is highly reliable and backed by a 5-year warranty.
Pricing and availability
The new 26 TB WD Purple Pro is available now at a discounted price of $570 a piece, or $70 more expensive than the previous 24TB model. While that’s not cheap, it’s a great deal when you consider that an 8TB SSD costs about the same.
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