WD has announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Purple line of 3.5-inch hard drives for surveillance applications, with the release of the 6Tb capacity.

Designed for video surveillance, a highly data-rich category within the Internet of Things (IoT), WD Purple hard drives excel in new and existing home and small business security system environments with up to eight hard drives and up to 32 high-definition (HD) video cameras.

WD Purple hard drives are being offered in capacities from 1Tb up to 6Tb.

“Video surveillance has long been a pioneering IoT application. Driven by machine-to-machine interaction between high-resolution, high bit-rate video cameras and high-capacity surveillance video recorders, IoT brings access and big data analytics to improve user’s security,” says Matt Rutledge, senior vice-president and GM of WD’s Storage Technology group. “WD Purple 6Tb drives enable innovation in this fast growing market”

WD Purple hard drives are equipped with exclusive WD technologies, including:

* AllFrame – in conjunction with ATA streaming, AllFrame reduces video frame loss, improves playback and increases the number of drive bays supported. WD Purple includes exclusive firmware upgrades that enable improved playback and minimize interruptions within a surveillance system

* IntelliSeek Technology – with low power consumption playing a crucial role in high-temperature always-on surveillance environments, IntelliSeek technology calculates the optimum seek speeds for the system workload, enabling lower power consumption and reducing noise and vibration.

Adds Kalvin Subbadu, sales manager: Components, WD South Africa, “As the IoT gains impetus, this development drives the requirement for more surveillance storage space. WD is meeting this requirement ‘head on’ with the introduction of its 6Tb Purple drive, allowing users to pack up to 48Tb in an eight bay enclosure.

“Furthermore, the South African market is an extremely security conscious one and together with the uptake of HD cameras, more storage is available than ever before for security surveillance storage requirements.”

Built for seamless 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 chip-sets. First introduced in February 2014 with the launch of WD Purple, WD worked closely with surveillance partners to develop a proprietary benchmark to define and demonstrate performance in surveillance systems.

Tests of WD Purple hard drives indicate superior performance to competitive surveillance-class brands of storage, especially as cameras, channel count and workloads increase. A special Compatibility Selector is available to assist customers with surveillance drive selection.