2mb vs 8mb hard drive cache

auggybendoggy wrote on 6/1/2003, 2:16 AM

Is 8mb cache worth the money or shall I go for more memory?

I know it speeds up the access time but is that all that helpful. I feel like im better off getting the 160 gb for bout 120.00

If anyone can advise I would appreciate it.

Gene

Comments

auggybendoggy wrote on 6/1/2003, 2:17 AM

ps. when I say 160gb (2mb buffer) vs a 120gb (8mb buffer)

Which one????

farss wrote on 6/1/2003, 3:06 AM

For video the buffer is useless, its going to hold how much video?

For business apps it helps but when you have to move large amounts of data backwards and forwards as in an NLE its going to do didly squat. It may have a small benefit on say the dive you load apps from and where your temp files are if they're small.

I have a 80 GB drive with 8 MB buffer to load apps from and two 80 GB drives with 2 MB buffers but they are ATA 133 and run in RAID 0 to futher wind the wick up.

The critical figure to look at for drives for editing is sustainded data rate, include your controllers and anything else in the data path, thats why top end systems use SCSI.

salad wrote on 6/1/2003, 8:20 AM

Another thing to consider, is the Warranty. Western Digital for example is now only giving one year on the 2, and 3 years on the 8MB. This is for drives purchased after a certain date.
I just had a 40 GB 2MB cache drive go partially bad, but it falls under the older warranty program. It was 2 years and 5 months old when it went bad and they replaced it, no questions asked.

There are those that will dissagree on the difference for video.....
I would go with the 8MB buffer.

Anyone else see any performance benefits from the 8MB buffer?

Jay_Mitchell wrote on 6/2/2003, 4:37 AM

How can you determine what the cutoff date or OEM Code is for the extended warranty models?

--Jay Mitchell