Western Digital Release 26TB AI Hard Drive Designed For AI Video Surveillance Applications.

Western Digital Release 26TB AI Hard Drive – Western Digital has expanded its Purple Pro storage range with the release of a 26TB CMR hard drive designed to meet the demands of AI-enabled video surveillance.

Designed for continuous operation, the drive has a workload rating of 550TB per year and is suited to use in deep-learning servers, cloud storage systems, AI recorders, and multi-bay enclosures.

The new drive broke cover at ISC West 2025 in Las Vegas a couple of months ago and is engineered for use in large-scale, high-definition, multi-stream recording environments.

The 26 TB WD Purple Pro HDD is built on an 11-disk platform and uses ePMR (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording) and OptiNAND flash-enabled technology to improve reliability and data handling.

According to Western Digital, the new model supports up to 64 single-stream HD cameras or 32 AI analytics streams using its AllFrame AI technology, which it says helps reduce frame drops during real-time processing.

It also includes tarnish-resistant components for operation in harsh environments and integrates with Western Digital Device Analytics for health monitoring when used with compatible video management systems.

The Purple Pro 26 TB has a stated mean time between failure (MTBF) of up to 2.5 million hours and is covered by a 5-year warranty.

You can learn more from local Western Digital distributors – LTS carries WD in Sydney here and Net Digital does in Melbourne. There’s more SEN news here.