Solid find. They’re optimised for continuous write operations but should still be usable elsewhere.
Bobsofa
I’d nuke it with Darik’s Boot and Nuke without any other drive or network attached. You don’t know what is on that drive.
52K hours at 50 starts is insane btw. Especially for a JBOD.
malvixi
Whats the speed on this?
unabletocomput3
I’m pretty sure Linus, or some other larger tech group, did something like this where they went to goodwill or similar stores and bought a bunch of DVR’s and such just to crack them open and use the drives.
AK_4_Life
Too bad it’s too small to be useful.
coffeejn
If you don’t trust it for storage, I’d harvest the magnets.
Dotternetta
Nice
ThisIsntAndre
we watching the 52k hours and make a file about it and all the events
GalaxLordCZ
Yeah, this was an old lifehack I saw, they can range from shitty-ish 500gb drives all the way to some nice finds like this.
redstern
Keep in mind that the WD purples are video storage drives, so while you absolutely can use it for other things, they are horribly slow.
Those are built for capacity at the cost of speed, since video storage is really only ever going to do sequential read/writes. Those are built with shingled sectors, which has an enormous penalty to write speed, especially random writes. They also spin slow for extra reliability.
So don’t expect even decent performance using it as a game drive.
8.32 years of continuous use.. 59k hours.. how reliable is this drive going to be?
NekulturneHovado
Damn, I have one in my PC. Iirc it has 120TB written to it. Runs perfectly well.
Beginning_Bear7204
Could be awesome porn. Take a look. Get back to us.
TheNauticalSurvivor
Thanks for posting the crystal disk info. 51930 hours with 50 power on’s. I know most companies never turn off computers, much less surveillance systems, but thats nutty. On average thats once every 43 days.
IdealIdeas
It will make for an excellent movie storage drive or anything else that you dont care about taking forever to load.
TryingToBeReallyCool
I’d be skeptical of its reliability given where you found it, these systems write alot and can degrade drive performance and reliability. Not saying you shouldn’t use it, just make sure you back its contents up
sudoertor
Check the smart data on the drive.
While old DVR units are a great source of cheap drives, they’re sometimes well used. Heck, I’ve seen one that had 4 years of total power on hours.
Just saw the smart data you posted.
Drive is almost at 6yrs power on. Definitely wouldn’t use for critical data.
StruggleBus216
I am A CCTV professional and those are meant for continuous read and write and do okish in A raid. Not sure I’d I would use in A gaming computer though.
GabrielGamer790
GIVE IT TO MEEEE! I only have 2 300gb hdds and 1 128gb ssd 💀
That WD purple will last you a decade. I’ve had my 760 gig since I was a teenager, now it’s media storage.
an_oddbody
It’s… got the goods on it.
off-a-cough
I would scan the disk for entertaining videos to recover, first. The file system and codecs *might* be a challenge, but I’m betting it wasn’t encrypted.
I’m ambitious, though – I’ve done digital forensics professionally.
jakeandbakin
This should go to r/dumpsterdiving thus is a great find!
twain535
Great find. While these are far from being fast drives, they’re amazing as storage devices. Not sure what condition yours is in but my 1TB purple from 2015 is still running rock solid after having been a windows and game installation drive. It’s also been abruptly shut down due to brown outs a thousand times but it still works like new. Super reliable.
ovrclocked
Fun fact WD external HDDs use WD Greens and often cheaper than WD HDs. Although you may have to reflash the firmwares if you want to use it in your pc
Lancaster1983
/r/sneakybackgroundfeet
Fatmaster9000
Yah I usually go to thrift stores with my screwdrivers and pull the drives from stuff like this and leave the dvr’s for e wast and tinkerers
Fatmaster9000
I have 1x2tb purple in a dual core Lenovo sff Lenovo with 8gb that I added a 512mb pci-e card to to setup plex server and a drash picked GB switch from a Bestbuy remodel dumpster : )
31 Comments
Solid find. They’re optimised for continuous write operations but should still be usable elsewhere.
I’d nuke it with Darik’s Boot and Nuke without any other drive or network attached. You don’t know what is on that drive.
52K hours at 50 starts is insane btw. Especially for a JBOD.
Whats the speed on this?
I’m pretty sure Linus, or some other larger tech group, did something like this where they went to goodwill or similar stores and bought a bunch of DVR’s and such just to crack them open and use the drives.
Too bad it’s too small to be useful.
If you don’t trust it for storage, I’d harvest the magnets.
Nice
we watching the 52k hours and make a file about it and all the events
Yeah, this was an old lifehack I saw, they can range from shitty-ish 500gb drives all the way to some nice finds like this.
Keep in mind that the WD purples are video storage drives, so while you absolutely can use it for other things, they are horribly slow.
Those are built for capacity at the cost of speed, since video storage is really only ever going to do sequential read/writes. Those are built with shingled sectors, which has an enormous penalty to write speed, especially random writes. They also spin slow for extra reliability.
So don’t expect even decent performance using it as a game drive.
Zero-fill it (1-pass) with [CCleaner](https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/download), then use it as a storage drive on your personal PC.
8.32 years of continuous use.. 59k hours.. how reliable is this drive going to be?
Damn, I have one in my PC. Iirc it has 120TB written to it. Runs perfectly well.
Could be awesome porn. Take a look. Get back to us.
Thanks for posting the crystal disk info. 51930 hours with 50 power on’s. I know most companies never turn off computers, much less surveillance systems, but thats nutty. On average thats once every 43 days.
It will make for an excellent movie storage drive or anything else that you dont care about taking forever to load.
I’d be skeptical of its reliability given where you found it, these systems write alot and can degrade drive performance and reliability. Not saying you shouldn’t use it, just make sure you back its contents up
Check the smart data on the drive.
While old DVR units are a great source of cheap drives, they’re sometimes well used. Heck, I’ve seen one that had 4 years of total power on hours.
Just saw the smart data you posted.
Drive is almost at 6yrs power on. Definitely wouldn’t use for critical data.
I am A CCTV professional and those are meant for continuous read and write and do okish in A raid. Not sure I’d I would use in A gaming computer though.
GIVE IT TO MEEEE! I only have 2 300gb hdds and 1 128gb ssd 💀
I’d get WDDiag and make sure all the sectors are good. https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6728-western-digital-diagnostics.html
That WD purple will last you a decade. I’ve had my 760 gig since I was a teenager, now it’s media storage.
It’s… got the goods on it.
I would scan the disk for entertaining videos to recover, first. The file system and codecs *might* be a challenge, but I’m betting it wasn’t encrypted.
I’m ambitious, though – I’ve done digital forensics professionally.
This should go to r/dumpsterdiving thus is a great find!
Great find. While these are far from being fast drives, they’re amazing as storage devices. Not sure what condition yours is in but my 1TB purple from 2015 is still running rock solid after having been a windows and game installation drive. It’s also been abruptly shut down due to brown outs a thousand times but it still works like new. Super reliable.
Fun fact WD external HDDs use WD Greens and often cheaper than WD HDs. Although you may have to reflash the firmwares if you want to use it in your pc
/r/sneakybackgroundfeet
Yah I usually go to thrift stores with my screwdrivers and pull the drives from stuff like this and leave the dvr’s for e wast and tinkerers
I have 1x2tb purple in a dual core Lenovo sff Lenovo with 8gb that I added a 512mb pci-e card to to setup plex server and a drash picked GB switch from a Bestbuy remodel dumpster : )
😂