Hard Drives

[rolibr24]

Currently I do not have a hard drive in my NVR. I bought my NVR and cams solely to monitor livestock remotely. But my 6 cams is having the desire for more with now wanting to put them around the house after spending time here.

My concern is budget. I’m finding of branded HDD’s for half the cost of WD Purple from ebay. But after spending time here I’ve come to realize I also need to upgrade my router from my 10 year old hand me down from the in-laws so I can have VPN, along with other upgrades to secure my network. Plus a few additional cameras to watch my property.

The kids absolutely love these cameras and watching their livestock during the day. They’d rather watch them on the monitor instead of other crap on the TV. Now they are wanting to see what is going on at night when they aren’t watching live.

To save some coin, how are these no name hard drives? Will a cheap 2 or 4tb be sufficient for the time being while I upgrade other aspects of my system and network? Or are they absolute garbage and should I save the coin and hold out?

 

[Old Timer]

The drives will probably work, but they will probably fail sooner then the purple that are designed for video storage.

I get quite a few pull out drives and have used them in DVR when I am not really relying on the DVR.
I also record the video with BlueIris, so the DVR is just a backup.
they will usually last less then 2 years before dying.
I have WD purple drives that are past 5 years and one working on 8 years.

 

[TonyR]

+1^^.
A non-surveillance rated HDD is better in a NVR than NO drive but.....
Surveillance-rated HDD's (like WD Purple) are purpose-built for the job they do: surveillance is writing almost constantly to the drive with occasional read, regular HDD's are designed to do some of both but do more reading...it's apparent they have different demands so they are designed differently.

 

[Flintstone61]

The DVR's and Nvr's you find at costco or amazon with an "included" drive are nothing more than desktop hard drives. Surprise in every box. I've seen Hitachi deskstar, WD green, Toshiba, and Seagate in the ones I've peeled open. They're all still running, after suffering miserable existences in Garages with no Heat or AC in Minnesota. When you get serious a WD Purple is the way to go though. I bought one ( WD Purp 8TB) on Ebay, after researching the seller and asking him a question. had something like 23 or 33 power cycles and about 400 hours of Uptime, according to the Speccy utility. So I got it for $50 less than a new one. ( Pre Pandemic pricing)
Now they are astronomically high for a new one.