buffer found in IDE HDD

[tho]

I recently bought a western digitial with 8MB buffer. Now, my desktop has 2x80GIG IDE HDD, one has 2MB buffer and the other 8MB buffer. Im using my 8MB buffer HDD as a primary partition running winxp.

What is all this buffer business found in HDD? I did noticed significant speed increase in the 8MB buffer HDD.

How does the buffer size in HDD provide speed increase?

 

[tho]

anyone ?

 

[biostud]

It stores temporary data before writing and reading on the HDD, this kinda equals to have more RAM in your computer.

 

[tho]

the difference between 2mb and 8mb can provide significant difference, from human perspective?

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: tho
the difference between 2mb and 8mb can provide significant difference, from human perspective?

The system will seem a bit more responsive because the drive has a bigger pool of cached data to feed the memory while the drive goes off and seeks for the next bit of data. The speed increase from the 2MB to the 8MB cache might not entirely be from the cache, though.

If you bought the 8MB drive a quite a while after the 2MB, chances are the newer drive is has fewer platters than the older drive. Most older 80GB drives were made of four 20GB platters or two 40GB platters while some newer models have a single 80GB platter (which is one reason why they are so much cheaper than they used to be). On a single platter 80GB drive, the data is packed four times more densely than an older 80GB drive that uses four so in most cases the read/write heads have to do a lot less seeking on the newer drive. This makes the newer drive seems more responsive in general (especially if you've just started filling it up and a lot of your data is located in sectors that are physically close together).

 

[EeyoreX]

the difference between 2mb and 8mb can provide significant difference, from human perspective?

Not by itself, no. As was said if your older drive is significantly older that can be part of the difference. If the older drive was operating in PIO mode that would be a huge difference. The other possibility is that it's all in your head. That you think the drive is so much faster that it may appear so to you. The reality is that if you are seeing a significant difference between the two there is more likely than not a problem with the older drive. I see no significant difference in drives that have different sized buffers, nor do I see that big a difference for most things when I compare 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives. From a human perspective. Though I would more likely call this difference significant because I can tell.

\Dan

 

[sharkeeper]

Am I the only one that read the title as "butter found in IDE HDD"??!

Cheers!