The WD WD Purple Pro 18TB (WD181PURP) uses CMR recording.
Verified against: WD Purple Pro smart video hard drive product brief · Checked
Conventional recording writes tracks side by side without overlap, so a write never forces the drive to rewrite neighbouring data. That makes the WD181PURP safe for every use including RAID, ZFS, a NAS, and anything with sustained random writes. A rebuild or a resilver on this drive behaves the way the array expects, which is the whole reason the distinction matters. There is no recording-technology reason to avoid this drive for any workload.
| Model number | WD181PURP |
| Brand | WD |
| Family | WD Purple Pro |
| Capacity | 18TB |
| Form factor | 3.5" |
| Rotational speed | 7200 RPM |
| Cache | 512 MB |
| Recording technology | CMR |
| Workload rate | 550 TB/year |
| Warranty | 5 years |
| Status | Current |
| Replaced by | — |
A dash means the manufacturer does not state that field for this exact model. We leave it blank rather than filling it from a retailer listing.
It is CMR. That comes from WD Purple Pro smart video hard drive product brief, which is WD's own documentation for this exact part number rather than a capacity-level summary or a retailer listing.
Yes. Conventional recording means a write never forces neighbouring tracks to be rewritten, so rebuilds and resilvers behave normally. There is no recording-technology objection to this drive in an array, check the workload rating and warranty for your duty cycle separately.