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General discussion

buying new hard drive-- advantages of 2 vs 8 mb buffer?

Feb 12, 2004 1:35PM PST

hi, there,

well my 40 and 60 gig drives are full up, and rather than clean them out I think I'll just add another drive.

I am thinking of a 120 gb seagate drive . . . but one version is 2 mb buffer and the other is 8. I am not a gamer. which should i get? --fj

Discussion is locked

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Re:buying new hard drive-- advantages of 2 vs 8 mb buffer?
Feb 12, 2004 2:29PM PST

8 is always better than 2 especially if it costs is the same.

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Re:Re:buying new hard drive-- advantages of 2 vs 8 mb buffer?
Feb 12, 2004 3:26PM PST

ah, but it doesn't cost the same, the 8 mb is another 20 bucks i think. maybe 40. do i need it??

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Did you see that recent sale?
Feb 12, 2004 7:56PM PST

I was there at Office Max with 160GB Hard Disks going for $59. (After rebate)

You may want to just keep shopping.

Bob

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Re:Re:Re:buying new hard drive-- advantages of 2 vs 8 mb buffer?
Feb 13, 2004 1:37AM PST

I was watching a tech-tv show a while back and they were talking about hd's and ata100 vs ata133.

What they were saying was in THEIR tests they saw very little diff.

However they did see a diff with hd cache size, bigger is better.

So if you want to run the tech-tv benchmarks get the bigger cache.

Do you need the bigger cache to run your stuff??
I have no idea.
I'm thinking most folks won't see a diff.

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With Seagate the 2 meg cache gets you...
Feb 13, 2004 5:36AM PST

a one year warranty and the 8 meg cache gets you a three year warranty.

You might want to consider that too.

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Re:buying new hard drive-- advantages of 2 vs 8 mb buffer?/too add
Feb 13, 2004 10:35AM PST

8 megs, as has been stated, is preferred but you will see no difference in performance if the drive is just used for storage. As I understand it, performance improvements only happen when you run programs from the drive and the correct data is cached.

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Re:buying new hard drive-- advantages of 2 vs 8 mb buffer?
Mar 31, 2004 9:00AM PST

Ok the skinny! If you like to game 8meg cache or, if you like to have multiple windows open and do not have a lot of memory onboard also go with the 8meg cache otherwise the only other reason to have it is for the future when you will do these things and need it. Also the warranty is much better because the drive is not taxed as much with the 8meg cache. Whereas the 2meg cache must work more often to do the same work read/write or I/O if you prefer.