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Seagate FireCuda 4 TB CMR hard drive vs Western Digital Purple Pro 8 TB Surveillance Drive

A desktop drive with data recovery, or a surveillance drive rated for twice the duty?

Both are 3.5-inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 rpm with 256 MB of cache and five years of warranty. The Seagate FireCuda 4 TB states CMR, 300 TB a year, 255 MB/s sustained, three years of Rescue data recovery and its height. The WD Purple Pro 8 TB states 550 TB a year — the highest on the internal shelf — and up to 2.5 million hours MTBF, for surveillance recorders writing around the clock.

Seagate FireCuda 4 TB 3.5-inch internal hard drive with a SATA connector

Seagate FireCuda 4 TB CMR hard drive

7.8/10

Wins 1 of 11

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WD Purple Pro 8 TB 3.5-inch internal hard drive with a SATA connector

Western Digital Purple Pro 8 TB Surveillance Drive

8.4/10

Wins 3 of 11

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≈ $400

Port against port

Compared on FireCuda 4 TB CMR hard drive Purple Pro 8 TB Surveillance Drive
Capacity 4 TB 8 TB, in the maker's decimal unit
Form factor 3.5-inch 3.5-inch
Height 1.03 in (26.1 mm) Not published
Interface SATA at 6 Gb/s SATA 6 Gb/s, per Western Digital's datasheet for the Purple Pro range; the Amazon title and bullets do not…
Rotational speed 7200 rpm 7200 rpm
Cache size 256 MB 256 MB
Stated workload rating 300 TB per year 550 TB per year, the highest on this shelf: a specified annual duty, not a total the drive counts down from
Warranty length 5-year limited warranty Five years, limited
Stated MTBF Not published Up to 2.5 million hours
Stated acoustic figure Not published Not published
Stated idle power Not published Not published
On Amazon.com, October 26, 2026 Listed, no current offer $400

A tick means one listing published something the other did not, or published a better figure. It does not mean the product is better, and the column is not a score out of anything: a maker who says less loses lines here without losing a comparison. The two verdicts below are where the page is settled.

Which of the two, for which household

Seagate FireCuda 4 TB CMR hard drive

No Amazon.com offer for the Seagate FireCuda 4 TB CMR hard drive on October 26, 2026: it may not be buyable in the United States, which is the first thing to weigh against anything below.

Take the FireCuda for a desktop or a gaming PC: CMR, the faster stated rate and a recovery service with the warranty. It had no current Amazon.com offer on October 26, 2026.

Buy the Western Digital Purple Pro 8 TB Surveillance Drive

Take the Purple Pro for a video recorder or a NAS that writes all day: twice the capacity and the highest workload rating here. It cost $399.99 on Amazon.com on October 26, 2026.

The questions that come up before an order

What is a workload rating?

The volume of data the maker specifies the drive for each year, reads and writes together. A recorder writing several cameras continuously can pass 300 TB a year.

What does Rescue add to the warranty?

A data recovery attempt if the drive fails, not just a replacement drive.

Each one, in detail

Every price named in a summary was read on the date that review carries. What a shop asks today is shown beside the product, and it moves.