WD Purple 3 TB or Seagate® 3TB ST300VN000 Server NAS Drive

[Swagata01]

I want to buy a HDD; The choices are WD Purple 3 TB and Seagate® 3TB ST300VN000 Server NAS Drive. I want to use the drive for storage of music, videos, pictures, movies. I know these are server type drive but there aren't many drive available in where I live, Bangladesh. Which will be better ? Can I use these drive on Asrock B85 board ?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The purple is designed exclusively for surveillance work. Current rives can be used on any MoBo within the last 6 years or so,

 

[Onus]

I'm not sure what makes it "different;" I suspect the cache on the Purple is optimized for multiple streams, such as from an array of surveillance cameras. Being intended for NAS use, the Seagate drive may have TLER, which would make it suitable for use in RAID arrays. If you might do that, get the Seagate. Otherwise, for general use, I doubt there'd be remarkable differences. I'd look at length of warranty.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Surveillance systems follow a write continuously and read rarely model. The firmware is therefore set up to heavily optimize write over read .... exactly the opposite of what you generally want a desktop HD to do. This is even more important for the stated usage ..... storage of music, videos, pictures, movies where you "write once" and "read over and over and over again".

For this usage you a drive that excels in continuous read which works represents performance on really large files stored continuously on a disk.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/-01-Read-Throughput-Average-h2benchw-3.16,2901.html

Another one to look at is Media performance of more random but significant size files.(i.e. music library)
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/-14-PCMark-7-Windows-Media-Center-Performance,2912.html