Difference between these two hard drives

[mufcmark]

I've been looking at the the 1tb seagate barracuda but it seems like there are two variants.

One is the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-243-SE

The other is Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB 6gb/s 32mb cache SATA-IIhttp://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-248-SE

Is there much difference between sata II and 6gb/s hard drives in terms of performance?

There is another variant on a different website that is still a seagate barracuda but has 5400 RPM and 8ms seek time. Would this be slower than the other two hard drives?

One thing I was also wondering was what difference does the cache make? Is there much difference in performance between 16mb cache and 32mb cache?

Any advice would be great,

Thanks.

 

[Philtor]

First off does your Motherboard have SATA III ports as this is what the SATA 6 Gbp/s is referring to? With regards to the drive speed you will find that 5400RPM drives are usually intended for storage use, so you want a 3.5" 7200RPM drive. Finally Cache makes very little difference in the real world to be honest.

I think that OcUK have made a mistake on the second link as they state SATA II but also mention 6 Gbp/s (which is actually SATA III)

 

[Chiribo]

Actually... if they're just mass storage drives, why would you need them to be 7200 rpm? 5400 is perfectly adequate and is (I assume as I haven't checked the links) cheaper and draws slightly less power.

And in terms of SATA II / III, you wouldn't see any difference from a disk drive anyway. Just marketing departments trying to earn their bread,

 

[Philtor]

That's a fair point... If the drive is just being used for storage then a 5400RPM version would be fine. I was thinking boot drive when I was typing my post