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.

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.