WD AV-GP or WD GP drive for HDI 3.0 Base?

[fld9]

There is not much difference in price between the WD 2TB 32MB cache AV-GP and the GP one: about 20€.

AV-GP: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=615
GP: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=576

Power-conserving WD AV-GP SATA hard drives take advantage of WD GreenPower Technology to meet the extreme requirements of demanding audio and video environments. With power reduction of up to 40%, they deliver cool and quiet operation and reliability perfect for audio video applications such as PVRs, DVRs, set-top boxes (STBs) as well as surveillance video recording.

Any recommendation?

[fld9]

I guess I will just have to answer to myself :-)

I found this article: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/15-2tb-hdd-roundup.html

Western Digital claims the AV-GP series to use special PWL technology (Preemptive Wear Leveling). Its point is that the HDD moves its heads above the entire platters from time to time. The company claims this helps reduce the nonuniform wear of the platters typical of HDDs that are employed for video applications. Unfortunately, Western Digital does not reveal all the details and we don’t really know how the wear of the platters can be affected by the actuator with heads sweeping over the platter surface. Perhaps the heads are working at that, reading and writing data back?

The Western Digital AV-GP is an odd product. This model is meant for home electronic appliances but does not have any distinguishing features save for somewhat slowed-down heads.