Cache On A Hard Drive - How Important?

Slogan · 5 Jul 2006 at 10:40

I visit OCUK most days and am always greeted with the 16mb SeaGate Barracuda.

Until now I've only worked with 8mb Cache max on hard drives and as I'm building a new computer shortly - I was wondering how important the cache actually is. This will also be my first journey with SATA drives also.

Originally I was going to get two 160GB drives (7200rpm, 8mb Cache) and I was set on that idea - but I would possibly consider getting a 200GB drive (7200rpm, 16mb) if it made all the difference - I was just wondering what that difference is?

I can't really drag it out anymore. I'm not sure Samsung do such drives (as I would advised to go with Samsung from one of the kind members on here) - so if they don't - where would be the next best step?

Thanks.

Slogan.

Dutch Guy · 5 Jul 2006 at 11:58

I wondered this myself as well and after reading some reviews I think the difference is minimal.

I think this is the order of importance determining speed:
RPM > data density > cache > interface

But I could be wrong

t31os · 5 Jul 2006 at 12:41

Generally all sata drives are 7500rpm, unless you buy a Raptor (current fastest drive, which is 10000rpm).

8mb cache is certainly worth it over the 2mb cache drives, though i don't think you get 2mb on sata drives. 16mb over 8mb is debatable but apparently still worth the extra, personally i have 3 sata drives, the raptor we can ignore, what i'm comparing is the other 2, 1 has an 8mb cache, the other has 16mb, and personally i can't see the 16mb doing anything quicker then the 8mb, but the cost difference is minimal, so no harm paying for the 16mb cache.

Either way, if you've never had sata before you will see a performance boost.

Slogan · 5 Jul 2006 at 14:39

Cheers for replying.

I have done some partitioning before and am comfortable with the idea of it - However, would it make much sense to buy two 200GB hard drives (7200rpm/8mb) as opposed to one 400GB drive (7200rpm/16mb)?

I understand I would be able to partition the disk in a way that it acts like a number of hard drives - but when it comes to formatting for installation of XP/Linux etc - is this not a real pain?

Or, do the installation disks know to format a certain partition and to install on a certain partition, when prompted?

Alternatively, are SeaGate a good alternative to Samsung? I noticied they don't offer the 16mb Cache.

t31os · 5 Jul 2006 at 16:32

Personally i feel if the cost is the same, you'd be better with one big drive, since they have been shown to benchmark higher then the smaller drives.

Depends what you need from it, disk space, performance, noise levels....

If you're going to partition the disk, it would be easier on one disk also, as appose to doing Raid with 2 drives and partitioning which will take longer, though would offer some performance boost, depending how you use it.

If the 2 drives work out cheaper do it that, otherwise i'd personally choose the one drive.