i am interested in a maxtor 160gb hard drive but it only has 2mb cache... will this really make much difference compared to one which has an 8mb cache? Quick quick lol because the clock is ticking...!
edit: its gone... could have got it in the end but i decided not to.... really should have got it but i think i just don't like getting things from ebay....
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited October 2004
The only way it would matter is if you ran LOTS OF HUGE FILES at it, and did it often. My Archive drive, the one Linux ISOs and ISO images get stored on, is a WD Cavair SE, 8 MB cache. For smaller files it makes ZERO difference, for large files it matters for the WD drives. Linux and Windows boot drives each have WD Caviar, non-SE. My Backup Image drives are SEs. Again, if you stream lots of huge flow sets at a drive, the larger cache can matter. Note where the drive performs better in benchmarks, the SE or an 8 MB cache Maxtor either one:
Only if you throw huge chunks of data at it, like average of 3-8 MB files, will the cache matter. For huge table relatioanl data bases, that medium to large companies have if they custom-build software, for motion graphics dev, and for some intense digital photo editing (I run 12 MB single files per pic into the digital editting box here, or bigger), or for backups where the backup archive is a single file to the OS, you get an advantage. Also, you will get an advantage if you store ISOs, whihc can be 650-710 MB gross file size for the ISO file size. For average use, NO. For movie download storage, YES. For intense audio file storage, probably if you also mix audio and run more than 10 minutes into your average file or put out 6 channel data onto a HD routinely and have 6-8 min or more of data in a file on average.
Figured I'd toss in where it would be an advantage to sue a large cache or large bandwidth or data flow capacity HD in terms of uses where that kind of HD would truely give you more bang for buck than normal HDswith 2 MB cache (soem HDs still coem with less cache, for normal everyday use these days you want a 2 MB cache HD. HTH.
Comments
What ya gonna be doing with it?
that baby
edit: its gone... could have got it in the end but i decided not to.... really should have got it but i think i just don't like getting things from ebay....
Tex
Tex
£60 = $107
so buying one here runs at pretty much double the price...
Only if you throw huge chunks of data at it, like average of 3-8 MB files, will the cache matter. For huge table relatioanl data bases, that medium to large companies have if they custom-build software, for motion graphics dev, and for some intense digital photo editing (I run 12 MB single files per pic into the digital editting box here, or bigger), or for backups where the backup archive is a single file to the OS, you get an advantage. Also, you will get an advantage if you store ISOs, whihc can be 650-710 MB gross file size for the ISO file size. For average use, NO. For movie download storage, YES. For intense audio file storage, probably if you also mix audio and run more than 10 minutes into your average file or put out 6 channel data onto a HD routinely and have 6-8 min or more of data in a file on average.
Figured I'd toss in where it would be an advantage to sue a large cache or large bandwidth or data flow capacity HD in terms of uses where that kind of HD would truely give you more bang for buck than normal HDswith 2 MB cache (soem HDs still coem with less cache, for normal everyday use these days you want a 2 MB cache HD. HTH.