External HDD

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diablo111

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 26, 2004
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A few weeks ago I picked up a Western Digital USB2.0 80GB external drive. It has a 2MB cache drive in it. Would switching it out with a special edition WD with 8MB of cache make any difference? Or is it limited by the bus speed?
 
USB 2.0 is capped at 480 mbps. Actual throughput will be lower than that. A WD800BB is quoted to have a peak transfer rate of 420 mbps. WD800JB steps that up to 602 mbps. The 8MB drive will be faster, but most of the gain will be masked by the limitations of USB, and it's probably not worth the bucks.

Also, most tasks that an external drive is called to do are linear file transfers (backing up, holding music, etc) that do not stress buffer size/performance, rather interface and disk throughput.
 
I allready have the western digital 80GB 8MB sitting around...but it doesn't sound like it's worth the trouble of swapping it around...kind of what I figured.

Thanks for the reply :)
 
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