Hard Drive Cache

[david_ceruti]

I am adding another hard drive to my machine - a 320mhz dual core with 2 gigs of

RAM (it looks as if this is the max that my motherboard can take). I am looking at

a 500 gig SATA drive.

 

Is it worth the extra money to get a hard drive with a large cache? I have drives

with 8, 16 and 32 Mb cache to choose from, all running at 7,200rpm.

Alternatively, should I go for a 10,000 rpm drive?

 

Thanks

 

David

[patricklavoie]

for photo stuff? anyone will do, no need for big cache or high speed, if its abrely more money..why not, but not a necessity. For video, you want the biggest, fastest, biggest cache you could buy.

[patricklavoie]

seirous video i should add..not your regular imovie type one, more like if you use avid or final cut to a pro level.

[Ed_Ingold]

Avoid 10K and faster drives. The latency is not improved enough to compensate for the high heat and greatly diminished expected life. 7200 RPM is fast enough for any digital or video work I've done. The bottleneck is in image processing, not data transfer.

[kevan_goddard]

Speed is not an issue - would seem to be the consensus. What about backing up your images, we all backup on a regular basis don't we????

 

Backing up either from or to a 500gB slow drive ain't much fun!

I have over 3TB of disk space now (I no longer back up to DVD - disks are almost as cheap) and with one of these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trayless-Mobile-Rack-Drive-Interface/dp/B000FSBVNC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1211896612&sr=8-1

I can swap 500gB SATA drives to my hearts content.

 

Get the best you can afford - don't buy down to a price - your pictures are priceless

[garrison_k.]

"Avoid 10K and faster drives. The latency is not improved enough to compensate for the high heat and greatly diminished expected life."

 

I Disagree. The raptors are considered an enterprise drive. The mtbf rate is higher than any standard consumer 7200 rpm drive on the market that that I know of and certainly higher than anything that will be suggested here.

 

"Alternatively, should I go for a 10,000 rpm drive?"

 

Only for a scratch disk for photoshop or to put your OS and software on. The raptors and the new velociraptors are great and will provide a noticeable difference in performance over any 7200rpm drive.

[david_ceruti]

Thanks a lot guys - now to go and splash out

:-)