OT: Hard-drive cache

MyST wrote on 6/6/2004, 6:40 AM

How much of an increase in speed does the 8mb cache give compared to a 2mb cache on 7200rpm ATA drives?
I currently have a Quantum 40Gig 7200rpm. 2MB hard-drive. Although it's a little loud when at work, if there isn't much to be gained, I'd keep it as my system drive and get a 160Gig 7200 8MB hard-drive for my projects.
I don't really want to discard a good drive.
I guess I could always have a 80Gig-8mb system, 40Gig-2mb media, and a 160Gig-8mb projects kind of layout.
However, if the 2mb drive is fine for a system drive, I'll opt for the one extra expense first.

Input?

Thanks

Mario

PS: I'm setting this up to be a Vegas/Acid/Sound Forge machine... so that's why I'm asking you guys. Especially since I believe audio/video editing is pretty hard on a PC. I'll also be doing lite Cinema 4D work to hopefully add to my Vegas projects.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/6/2004, 7:13 AM

I think that you won't noticed a big difference between 2mb cache & 8mb cache. Keep the 40. :)

Worst case is you buy an external enclosure & have a firewire drive. :)

farss wrote on 6/6/2004, 7:48 AM

8 MBytes is only like a second of video so it achieves zip. Except the 8MB ones used to come with a 3 year warranty and the 2s came with a 1 year, now that could be worthwhile. For a system drive a 8MB cache could be useful.