Hard Drive Cache is best for?

[idiotekniQues]

Hello. I am going to build a new rig tomorrow. I have a lot of hard drives because i like to keep all my files on two hard drives at all times, and never fill a partition up past 75-80%. I also shoot a ton of pictures which are quite large files since I use a canon 30d shooting raw files. I also keep 2 copies of each raw file for a while after i shoot it.

my question is i have a mix of hard drives with 8mb and 16mb cache. would using a 16mb cache benefit a hard drive that is being used more for heavy duty data access (the drive i edit my shots from, very heavy usage) or say my drive with my documents and media/music files that i use a lot or would it benefit my windows install and program file drive more.

my uneducated guess is that since proggies are loaded up into ram (by my understanding) the extra cache would not be as big of a benefit here compared to where you constantly access files from. but i really have no clue.

anybody have the right answer for me before i start installing?

 

[Roguestar]

The extra cache helps loading times of things like reading lots from the disk and loading large files, like when loading games.

This should help:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html

 

[idiotekniQues]

cool link. thanks.

for windows startup there is no gain at all. but it helps for other large program files? i couldnt see a benchie for that.

the cache helps for file writing and stuff, not a lot but it is noticeable.