8MB or 16MB Cache

How huge is the difference between Hard Drives that have 8MB Cache....and Hard Drives that have 16MB Cache....im asking becuase I can get a 250 MB WD Drive with 8 MB Cache, for the same price as a Maxtor 250 MB with 16 MB Cache......I would much rather go with WD....but if the difference is that big....then let me know

 

I have another question as well....If I have two Identical Drives each with 8 MB Cache....setting it up in RAID 0 will make them act as one drive, this I know.....will it also combine the Cache? Will it make it as though it has 16MB Cache?

 

Good questions. I'd, especially, like to know the answer to the RAID question.

 

In a Raid 0 ( or any array for that matter ) the drives only cache what thay individualy read / write ( no reads or writes are shared from drive to drive )....... Iv found the cache dosent make that big of a dif... thow i have notaced that it does make a bigger dif. if for some resion your hard drive to mobo bus ( PATA or SATA ) is limited for some resion ( like in the case of my 1750 the mobo dont support better then UDMA 33 even thow my hard drive supports UDMA 100 ) ........

 

I prefer the Maxtor DiamondMax with 16 MB cache, not because of the larger cache, which doesn't really make all that much difference, but because they are a fast, quiet, and well priced drive.

 

The big caches help particularly with things like video and audio editing.
For day to day computing, it's mostly a non issue. You look at the comparison charts and there's not a heck of a lot of difference between 8mb and 16mb drives at all.

 

What about for gaming...and ACE...Might I suggest a Spell check for ya, before you send your posts, lol...just playin Hmmm...Ive heard Maxter Drives can be quite loud...but ive read so many mixed reviews....what im looking at now is a Western Digital SATA 250 Gig 16MB Cache for $120, and Id like to get 2 and configure them for RAID 0. The other option was a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 SATA 300 Gig 16MB Cache for $129. Now I know its 50gigs more for $9 more, but Ive heard that Western Digitals are that much better than Maxtor....what are your thoughts....

 

Hard disk cache has little to no effect on game loading times.. iv notaced that most games loading is vary memory size / speed dependent...... and as for my spelling im dyslexic... vowels and me dont get along .....and it being so dark here that i cant see the keys and being half asleep might have somthign to do with it to .........

 

Don't bother with RAID 0 for games. It has no real effect on the load times. If I can find it, www.tomshardware.com had an article about this.

 

Well im not just a gamer...I enjoy Graphics usings Photoshop CS2, and Music production using Fruity Loops Producer Studio. I hope to get into Flash and 3D Studio Max as well. Ive worked with them before, but I want to start working with them again....

 

yeah thats the thing....I want Speed....Quality....and Performance...all in the same drive...and if I can get all that...AND 16MB of Cache....then flippin sweet.