Western Digital Purple 3TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch

I have used Surveillance drives in my DVRs for over 14 years. I bought this one to add storage to my new four tuner Amazon Fire TV Recast. It was immediately recognized and has worked flawlessly. So my Recast now has almost 4TB of storage. I can record on multiple tuners and watch previously recorded programs at the same time without issues.Previously I replaced my TIVO OTA DVR drive with a WD Purple drive and used that for 4 years until I got tired of paying the monthly fees. And before that I had a homebrew PC DVR running the old Snapstream software for several years. That PC system did have drives fail over the years, but the WD Purples just kept chugging.Surveillance drives are designed for continuous use, meaning 24x7x365 always on. They support recording multiple continuous video camera feeds around the clock. That sounds a little like recording multiple video streams from DVR tuners, right? These drives performance specs look weak compared to the speed demon drives out there, but DVRs don't need top speed, they need reliable, continuous, high volume data transfer. Also regular the drives have to do a sort of internal reset regularly. You never notice this using your PC, but it causes dropped frames when recording video.Based on my experience I would highly recommend the WD Purple drives for DVRs or Surveillance. They run cool, continuous and reliable.

I bought this to install in a USB 3.0 external case to use as an external backup for my RAID system, which has five of these 2TB drives. So far not a single burp in two years (kow).I like these because they run cooler, and are designed to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.These are designed for DVR type applications, but seem to work great in my desktop PC. What's the difference between DVR and desktop PC applications? Audio and video applications (like a DVR) are time sensitive, but PC data is not. A typical desktop hard drive will try up to ten times to write to a block, and if it fails, it will map to an alternate. This may take some time, but that doesn't impact the data as long as it gets written successfully. The information I have read suggests these drives will only try three times before mapping to an alternate block. If that's true then this type of drive will use up its spare block pool faster, but for all we know, these may have a larger spare block pool to start with. Both types of hard drives use the same error correction code (ECC) to protect the data.Some believe these will allow errors, thinking that video is not error sensitive (which is totally bogus). DVRs use a file system just like a desktop PC, so if that were true, then the file system could become corrupt causing a file or the entire drive to become unreadable. Or, a critical frame of video could end up on a bad block and render the recording useless. Neither scenario would bode well for DVR manufacturers.

Upgraded a 2014 500 gig Tivo Roamio, Series 5, to 3Tb in about 30 minutes. No problems. Did the easy upgrade, simply removed the old drive and saved it - in case there are problems down the road - then put the "rails" on the new drive, installed it, put the cover back on and plugged it in. Wait a bit. The Series 5 absolutely formats a new blank 3Tb disk for you (when it sees a blank disc) and if you're connected to the Internet it looks up your on-file MAC number and registers the machine again. It might, after recent upgrades, do an even larger disk, but I just went for "easy" - because of past reviews I know 3Tb definitely works. After the setup runs for a bit, you'll have to scan again for TV channels, and some other set-up chores like you did when you first bought it, but it's not big deal if you have your different logins handy - which you should. Make a list of shows you want recorded, you'll have to sign them all up again if you take this route. If you don't have the simple tools for the job, go to a Amazon, Best Buy, Micro Center, Fry's, etc. and buy a simple small bit torex tool kit for less than $10.00. You only need two of the most common sizes - but get the set because, who knows, you may have an odd ball screw... This is a very easy upgrade. If you get tangled up, or, forgot something, just put the old drive back in and check your old setting and shows until you're happy. I did not care to do the harder upgrade where you copy the old drive to the new drive and then use Windows disk software to "expand" the drive so the Tivo sees the entire new drive instead of the "old" drive's size. Didn't have a Windows machine and didn't have that many shows I still cared about. Next time, maybe. This is a quality drive, compared to many just a few dollars cheaper. I'm not expecting any problems, but I'll update the review if any pop up.