WD Purple

[Yorick]

Reliability aside, does your use case benefit from a drive that has higher write than read speeds? Or the other way around? Or indifferent to it because you’ll never max the speed of the drive?

As surveillance drives the wd purple are optimized to being written to 24/7 by cameras, with read being far less common.

 

[HoneyBadger]

tldr enabled

I giggled. I think you mean TLER here.

With regards to their suitability for ZFS there's no contraindications, and having TLER and some vibration damping is a plus. Being "optimized for write access" probably just means there's a greater portion of the onboard RAM cache allotted to writes; it might also be better under a sustained sequential write scenario than a comparable Blue drive.

 

[DelagioBr]

Hi there,

I know this topic is quite old, but I have the opportunity to build a FREENAS with 3x 6TB (WD60PURZ) of these WD purple drives.

This NAS will have the only purpose of have backup (files and VMs), once per day 4 servers would hammer this nas with data, then it would be "idle" until next backup window on the next day.

Do you think I would have problems with this WD purple drive? I read a few topics on the web saying they are quite reliable, but don't want to build something that I don't trust.

 

[sretalla]

Do you think I would have problems with this WD purple drive?

I run 8 of the 4TB PURZ drives and have seen no issues.

On paper (and in my experience), these drives are good for FreeNAS.

 

[DelagioBr]

I run 8 of the 4TB PURZ drives and have seen no issues.

On paper (and in my experience), these drives are good for FreeNAS.

Thanks for your reply!

Do you think 64mb cache and 5400~5900 RPM will affect the performance drastically?

 

[sretalla]

I don't see it as a problem in my system (I run in RAIDZ2, so IOPS of one disk is expected performance) For my use case it fits well with the WD REDs that are in the same pool (second VDEV).

 

[Yorick]

“7200 rpm drives are for chumps” - that’s from the block storage article. Even without block storage, whatever speed advantage a 7200rpm drive has is gone multiple times over once the pool starts to fill. Which means a bigger 5400/5900 drive wins over a slightly smaller 7200 one, for the same dollar.
More space trumps more rpms. Plus, in our little hobbyist world, “cool and quiet operation” matters.

 

[Teeps]

I made my way to this thread because it's getting harder and very expensive to find 5400rpm Red drives. What I found interesting, though, is that, at least up to 8TB, the WD80EFBX (latest 7200rpm red plus) actually has very similar acoustic properties to the WD84PURZ, with the 7200RPM Red Plus 8TB actually 1dB quieter than the purple during seek.

Even more surprisingly, WD120EFBX, actually matches the old WD100EFAX acoustic profile despite the jump to 7200RPM. It's only the latest 10TB reds that have a massive jump in noise level.

fyi the biggest difference I can see is that the purples are only rated for half the load/unload cycles of the reds, presumably because they are meant to always be loaded?

anyways, hope this helps someone else when trying to upgrade their storage in 2022 and maintain a quiet drive setup

 

[shawnsbrain66]

So... Yet another color to look at.
From what I see the price is pretty much the same as Red.

http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/W...urveillance-oriented-WD-Purple-series-35-HDDs

Not sure how the drive can be optimized to read/write faster with multiple continuous operations like streaming though.
Streaming large files like movies is a common workload for a NAS so there might be some benefit.

Worth is or just more marketing hooey?

Marketing hooey. I ran 2x4TB purple in a USB enclosure that was capable of raid1 and it ran for 2 years with 0 problems until they needed larger drives. No discernable difference at all.

 

[joruss]

Sorry for digging up this old thread but since I had my drives out for checkup after my PSU in NAS died quite explosively I thought I'll give you an update. 9 years on and all three WD purple 4TB drives are still going strong spinning for all that time almost 24/7.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Testimonials to longevity are always useful and entertaining. Pull the SMART stats and let's see the run-hours on those.

 

[Ericloewe]

I have six WD Reds with 9+ years on them, four have zero errors, two show minor SMART dodginess, but with no bits out of place.

 

[Ericloewe]

On the flip side, another batch of six 3 TB WD reds, a year younger, has had zero survivors to this point.

 

[joeschmuck]

My favorite Purple is the Purple Mattress girl, she cracks me up and is witty.

 

[Ericloewe]

I clicked the link in good faith, immediately regretted it before the page loaded, then I saw it was just YouTube and finally proceeded to be confused as hell.

 

[joeschmuck]

I clicked the link in good faith, immediately regretted it before the page loaded, then I saw it was just YouTube and finally proceeded to be confused as hell.

Yes, YouTube tosses an add at you first. Confused, my master plan worked. Kaos is alive!

 

[joruss]

Testimonials to longevity are always useful and entertaining. Pull the SMART stats and let's see the run-hours on those.

Sorry about the delay, had to order replacement PSU TWICE and only got to replacing it now.

#1 Not sure why it has clocked extra 5000 hours. I might have used it in my pc alone for a while. I remember buying it with #2.
It is the most abused drive so no wonder there's errors starting to show in stats.
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 15 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 75268 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 168 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 154 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 153 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged

#2 As I said pretty much sibling of #1
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 004 004 000 Old_age Always - 70497 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 176 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 162 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 262 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged

#3 Bough it later to set them up in a RAID 5 but after yet another lengthy rebuild and power outage I've lost pretty much good part of the data and decided to just keep the important data on one drive, random junk on the other and rsync the important stuff to the 3rd drive every now and then.
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 044 044 000 Old_age Always - 40915 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 130 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 110 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 31 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged

#4 It ain't purple but WD White taken out of 12TB WD MyBook USB enclosure I got on sale.
Fun fact - tried to test these purple drives with what was left of that enclosure and while it spinned the drives alright but didn't let me into data.
That 12TB drive was happily accepted tho. Gave me bit of a scare, I thought the remaining drives are done in.
Probably just firmware tied to certain drive series. :-(
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 016 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000a 100 100 067 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 095 095 000 Old_age Always - 35503 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 76 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1557 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1557 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged

Let me end with the picture of the dead PSU and word of wisdom. ;-)

Don't be like me - check your PSU and fans regularly.​

Fan was so clogged up with dust it couldn't spin anymore and I guess things got too hot.

 

[Ericloewe]

Look at all that escaped magic smoke.

What even is... was that cylindrical thing? Is that a cap that got half blown off, a discrete transistor, ...?

 

[joruss]

Look at all that escaped magic smoke.

What even is... was that cylindrical thing? Is that a cap that got half blown off, a discrete transistor, ...?

'Twas full shebang. Smoke, loud bangs (that got me really worried it was drive heads smashing against the wall) and general confusion WTF.
I suspect if it'd be going for longer there'd be more melting and possibly some fire too :| TBH just glad I was around when this happened.

Haven't investigated what was that blew out. There seems some thing missing (uncharacteristically shiny pads amidst the charred board) and the cylinder is probably a choke.

 

[Ericloewe]

Wow, a choke blowing up? I'm not going to say "no way", but that's insane.

Worst I've ever had personally was a Sony laptop power supply that went pop, released a bunch of magic smoke, but continued to work until I noticed, yelled like a little girl and pulled the plug.