The WD Purple is a surveillance drive with low power consumption and a design that's optimized for 24x7 operation. There is actually little beyond marketing that separates the Purple from the Red and Green drives. They all share almost identical hardware. The thing that does differentiate the Purple drives is their firmware which supports AllFrame, a surveillance specific feature. Allframe handles the cache in a way that is optimized for video streams. The AllFrame technology however is only enabled when used in conjunction with a supported host controller, most of which are only found in dedicated NVR (Network Video Recording) devices. As a result there is no benefit in using this drive in a HTPC to record video streams, because the surveillance specific functions won't be enabled. In terms of effective speed the Purple lags the new Red and Green drives by around 26%. [Oct '14HDrivePro]
If you are specifically looking for a 2TB Hard Drive, the Barracuda is both a solid performer and offers reasonable value for money. That said, It probably makes more sense to go for the 3TB version which, thanks to economies of scale, represents significantly better value for money. With the 3TB Barracuda you get 50% more storage and approximately the same performance for just 20% more money. [Sep '13HDrivePro]
We calculate effective speed which measures performance for typical consumers. Effective speed is adjusted by current cost per GB to yield value for money. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top HDDs. [HDrivePro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.