cache question

[creepcolony]

this is a probably a dumb question, but what's cache for? i'm looking to buy a new hard drive and am wondering if it's worth the extra money to buy a 16mb cache hard drive over one with 8mb cache.

[drizzt81]

this is a probably a dumb question, but what's cache for? i'm looking to buy a new hard drive and am wondering if it's worth the extra money to buy a 16mb cache hard drive over one with 8mb cache.
the harddisk's cache is used to prefetch data that the HDD thinks you may soon need. Since transferring data from the cache is much, much faster than from the medium, it improves performance. Larger cache = greater chance of a cache hit.
I do not know how big the improvement is.

[boredguyatcomp]

i dont think you would notice much difference for normal use, but for gameing it might help alot. thats my 2¢

[creepcolony]

oh, well i do game a lot. so do you guys think it's worth it to go 16mb cache?

[boredguyatcomp]

go for it.

[Adionik]

I have an HDD with a 16mb cache, but I can't really tell the difference. Then again I dont' have a drive to compare it to...other than my old IDE. Yeah. =X

[gwai lo]

What's the price difference?

I can't really tell the difference between my two drives, one's 8mb and the other is 16mb. Files transfer faster here and there, Windows boots a little faster (well..maybe, i don't reboot anyway, F@H FTW), and everything else is probably just the placebo effect.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/1465.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=1465)