FireWire HD: 2mb cache or 8mb?

T

themacko

Barking at the moon.
I need an external drive which will be used for storing my music, photos and probably some video (from a digicam for iMovie use). There seems to be about a $50 difference when it comes to harddrive cache, is there a noticeable diff. between 2mb and 8mb?
 
I read there is no difference in performance when you compare a disc with 2mb to the same one just with 8mb of cache. However, it seems 8mb cache discs perform a bit better in raid mode. Unfortunately I have no links for you.
My advice: save $50 and get the 2mb cache disc. Also go for 5400rpm to produce less heat and energy. For storage 5400rpm is quite enough.
 
I'd guess if you're going to deal with the slowness of moving everything over firewire, the performance advantage of the larger cache would be minimal. If it's for an internal drive, you might want to think harder about the bigger cache.
 
I've got an 8MB cache drive -- a Western Digital 120GB Special Edition. I have to say, this is a mighty fast hard drive, and would perform great in a video-editing setup. However, for just storing photos and music and such, you won't see much benefit with the extra 6MB of cache.

It would be perfect in a web server setup, though, as the cache is best utilized for multiple, fast, small read operations. The cache basically keeps information about recently accessed files, and the 8MB cache just offers more space to store more frequently accessed files. In the right setup, it does offer a decent improvement in speed. For a home user, save yourself $50.
 
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