8MB hard drive cache?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jrosenstein
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jrosenstein

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I'm in the market for a new hard drive, and i'm wondering whether it would be worth it to shell out the extra money for a drive with an 8MB buffer instead of 2MB. I currently have a 7200rpm Maxtor, I've had it for a year or so, and maybe I got a dud, but this thing squeals like hell, i NEED it quieter. Right now it's the loudest part of my system.

My machine isn't running RAID or anything, just ATA100. (AMD XP1700+, ASUS A7V333 board, 512mb of 2100 DDR.) I've read a bunch of reviews, and I'd like to keep this at about 80GB, and within shouting distance of $100.

Places like storagereview.com seem to benchmark the Seagate Barracudas significantly lower than, say, an IBM Deskstar 180GXP, which also has fluid bearings. This is the PC I use for work, too, so I can't slow it down. Would I be foolish to buy a Seagate solely on account of its low noise? Or should I shell out a little extra cash step up to a larger cache? (cash ... cache ... that was actually an accident)

thanks,
jacob
 
I just bought a Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM 8MB buffer, and I have noticed quicker read/write access. I have not done any benchmarking, but I have noticed a definite improvement.
 
Tough question. I guess it depends on the answer to this question: would the Seagate be fast enough to record as many simultaneous tracks as you need? If you can answer that, then I think you'll have the answer to your first question.

I can vouch for the quietness of the ATA IV (and there's a new ATA V out). It's simply inaudible.
 
i'll probably be getting a 1010 in the near future ... so at most, the hard drive should be able to deal with 6 or 7 inputs and maybe 20 playing back. not sure what resolution, but 20/48k sounds reasonable.

i think i'd feel better getting a seagate and knowing it'll be quiet ... so you guys are saying a Barracuda IV or V won't have a problem keeping up?
 
Stealthtech said:
I bought 2 of em
They are excellent drives ;)
Click to expand...

I meant to say 2 WD's with the 8mb buffer.
These are certainly not noisy drives and they do seem to be quicker. Im also quite certain that the Barracuda's will be sufficient for recording multiple tracks. I've never used one, but I dont hear anybody complaining.
 
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