Quick bit of advice

Sandmaster500

Sandmaster500

Sandmaster500

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Joined
20 Jan 2005
Posts
1,116
Location
Leeds/Oxford
Hi, i'm looking around for a new hard drive to replace my 120gb maxtor which died :(
I already have a 200gb Spinny which i am very pleased with. So i'm thinking of getting:
Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA)
Or
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)

In the specs of the drives the spinny is slightly better, but then again the WD has the 16mb cache...

Which drive would give the best overall performace? Any other options welcome.

thanks :)
 
derbyjake said:
id go for the 16mb cache western digital personaly because of it having double the cache of the other drive
Click to expand...


Having double the cache isn't a good reason for going for it. :rolleyes:

The difference that having double the cache makes might be.

Have you any evidence to present that double the cache of the WD improves its performance over and above the Samsung?

(I'm not saying it does or it doesn't make a difference - i'm merely pointing out that your argument needs substance to back it up)

M
 
Sandmaster500 said:
What exactly is the cache for?
Click to expand...

The cache is mainly to store information that is coming to the HDD to fast to be written to the platters.

The data bus rate is lots faster than the read/write rate.

If you are writing files that are larger than the cache size you will get a bottleneck. Files up to the size of the cache do not suffer from the bottleneck effect as the cache absorbs them until they are written to the disk.

Larger *is* better , but in the real world may not have much impact depending on the size of files you are shifting around.

M
 
Well it will be mainly used as a data drive, ie games, music, videos, etc.
Would probably prefer a faster access time that write time most of the time.

novid - why have you got your Spinny in a Silentmaxx? Never heard mine at all and i have ambers @ reduced volts.
 
Sandmaster500 said:
novid - why have you got your Spinny in a Silentmaxx? Never heard mine at all and i have ambers @ reduced volts.
Click to expand...

It may not be obvious from the sig, but my rig has absolutely no mechanical parts other than the drive (hmmm... well i have a DVD drive and a floppy). That means there is no noise generated from any other component than the drive.

Once the drive is in a SilentMaxx, i literally have a completely silent PC. The only noise i can hear is that of the floppy drive on boot. Then it is purely silent.

I hate noisy PCs - do my head in... lol

Even during a defrag, the most i can hear if i really concentrate is something like a light muffled rain patter. Ambient noise around me is louder than the PC, so even that is extremely hard to hear.

M
 
Koolio, would like to have a really quiet PC but wont be happeneing to me anytime soon, could be a fun project though.

Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
Looking through its spec i can't see anything that says it has NCQ which is one of the major benifits of SATA II i believe?

ta
 
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