!hard drive question--2mb vs 8mb cache--does it matter?

[nclark42]

Hello--

I am currently debating between:
Maxtor L01J120 - 120gb ATA/133 w/2mb cache
and
Western Digital WD1200JB - 120 ATA/100 w/8mb cache.

I was hoping to get some input from you guys. The Maxtor is nice because it is ATA133, but the cache is small compared to the WD ATA100 drive. I think my priority in this matter is speed, so I am inclined to go with the Maxtor. But what are the advantages of the bigger cache? Will I see a big performance difference between these two drives?

Thanks,
Neal

 

[microAmp]

The transfer rate 133 vs 100 doesn't matter. IDE HDD can barely get 60 let alone up to 100 or 133 Mb/s.

The Western Digital 8 MB version can perform near SCSI levels. It's a better deal.

Benchmark for WD120JB against some SCSI drives.

 

[LED]

What motoamd stated on the ATA 133 factor and with the 8mb cache buffer it allows data to to be obsorbed that much more @ once B4 shooting read or write so intial transfers boost then level out with the rest of the same so it gets the jump out of the block so to I wish I could speak instead of typing bytes

 

[bgeh]

it will matter if you have a sudden load, or in short bursts
but if you regularly do big file tranfers, it wouldn't matter

 

[Viper96720]

If you want Maxtor also makes the 120GB drive with the 8mb cache.

 

[Alphazero]

The 8MB WD will definitely be faster. With IDE hard drives, there is no difference in performance between ATA133 and ATA100, or even SATA for that matter.

 

[nclark42]

motoamd: I had never heard that IDE can't make it over 60mb/s. Why do they bother making ATA100 or ATA133 when ATA66 was enough? (according to what you said)

Alphazero: So SATA doesn't really give the alleged 150mb/s that it say it will under "phase 1"? that sucks. I was also thinking about going with SATA instead...hah, well, not like i can actually buy the hard drives anywhere right now.

All others: thank you for your replies. I will def. go with the WD w/8mb cache

oh yeah and also to Viper97620--last time i checked, that maxtor w/8mb was a big price leap from the drives im describing. These two are around the same (reasonable) price.

-Neal

 

[human2k]

For day to day use won't notice the difference between a 2mb cache or 8mb cache drive. I would save my $$$ and get a good quality 2mb 7200rpm drive, like a cuda which is dead quiet. If you do have the $$$, why settle for IDE, go SCSI if you need the performance.

 

[arcenite]

I personally feel that a drive with 8mb cache will give you much better performance for a desktop (lots of small transfers) than a 2mb cache drive.

Bill

 

[DT4K]

If you look at the reviews, the WD JB models with 8MB cache will offer better performance.

There are two reasons they make ATA 100 and ATA 133 even though the full bandwidth is not yet needed.
1. Marketing hype. It makes people think the drives are faster and therefore better. Would you want to be the company that only made ATA 66 drives when everyone else was making ATA 100 ?

2. Future needs. Eventually, this speed will be fully utilized and you will be able to see a performance difference between ATA 100 and ATA 133. They want to get it in place now so it will not be the limiting factor when other parts of the system also increase in speed. In the case of ATA though, we may never see the need for the ATA 133 standard since everything will be moving to SATA.

 

[Classified]

I built 2 pc's. Both have p4 2.4, 512mb Corsair xms 333, GF4Ti's, WinXP Pro (that old free version downloaded from limewire), really duplicate systems with current drivers. The only difference is one is a WD 800bb and a WD 800jb. I haven't run PCMark, Sandra, or anything other than the 3dmarks, but a "Seat of the pants" feel difference is noticeable. It is quicker, and mostly on file loading and things of that nature. Won't help you train your creature better in black & white or talk more clearly to that Sim Online, but it's speed increase nonetheless.

 

[microAmp]

Originally posted by: nclark42
motoamd: I had never heard that IDE can't make it over 60mb/s. Why do they bother making ATA100 or ATA133 when ATA66 was enough? (according to what you said)
-Neal

Like Shanti said, marketing. On a different note, WD does plan to make a 10k RPM HDD, so that'll help fill up the gap closer to advertised speeds.

 

[ctk1981]

Western Digital Raptor. 10K RPM. Serial ATA interface with 8MB buffer. 5.4MS seek times. Most importantly, 5 year warranty. I for one am waiting for this drive to become available.


I have also owned in the past a 80GB WD 8MB and 2MB drive. I cant really tell the difference and will never again invest money into a drive based solely on the size of cache. Acoustic levels, interface, cache, rpms, seek time, internal data transfer all play in now. I hate my 80GB 8MB WD. Its too damn noisy.

Ive even owned three of the legendary 60GXP IBM "Deathstars" 60GB. These drives were quick enough for me. Two of them are still in use by me. They all three at one time ran 24/7. Still have a year or so left of warranty on each one. My buddy has one, he unforunately wasnt as lucky. His died recently, but warranty is good on it.

I recently bought a new Seagate Barracude 7200.7 drive. Havent installed it or heard too much about it, but its specs are pretty impressive. I will be firing it up within the week to see how it really performs. I got this model with the 2MB cache because no one had the 8MB at the time and didnt feel it was necessary for what I wanted.

 

[EeyoreX]

Go with an 8MB cache and I think you will be happier. Though, I am not so sure it is a real noticable happier (happier=faster ) to mere mortals...

Originally posted by: Classified
WinXP Pro (that old free version downloaded from limewire

That's weird, I don't recall a "free" version of Windows XP from anywhere...
Just FYI, software piracy is frowned upon here. Not to mention, illegal. I don't think the moderators tolerate it much.

\Dan

 

[JHeiderman]

Personaly I have a WD 80gig SE with the 8megs of ram and I will never go back to a 2meg drive for my primary system. The speed improvement in reguar system use is much better and game performance and loading is a whole lot better!

WinXP Pro (that old free version downloaded from limewire)

Hey, thats funny. I saw Windows XP PRO AND those Western Digital SE drives just sitting around at this place I was at recently. It wasn't called Limewire though so I guess it wasn't free. It was called Computer United States or something like that... Is there a store locator for that Limewire place? I hope they open one up in Baltimore soon!



- J

 

[nclark42]

Originally posted by: Classified
WinXP Pro (that old free version downloaded from limewire

I feel that. I downloaded Windows 95, 98, 98SE, 2000, 2000 Advanced Server, ME, and XP. I did, however, purchase WFW 3.11

-Neal

 

[Bovinicus]

Originally posted by: Shanti
If you look at the reviews, the WD JB models with 8MB cache will offer better performance.

There are two reasons they make ATA 100 and ATA 133 even though the full bandwidth is not yet needed.
1. Marketing hype. It makes people think the drives are faster and therefore better. Would you want to be the company that only made ATA 66 drives when everyone else was making ATA 100 ?

2. Future needs. Eventually, this speed will be fully utilized and you will be able to see a performance difference between ATA 100 and ATA 133. They want to get it in place now so it will not be the limiting factor when other parts of the system also increase in speed. In the case of ATA though, we may never see the need for the ATA 133 standard since everything will be moving to SATA.

Yes, marketing hype is the biggest reason for it. However, future needs is not one of them. Serial ATA has been in development for years. The ones who create the standards knew that Serial ATA was on the horizon long before we did. It will be many more years before HDDs achieve transfer rates high enough to saturate the IDE bus.

However, there are several other reasons:

- Burst transfers; modern high-performance IDE HDDs can transmit somewhere around 90MB/s during a burst transfer. This is where ATA100 comes in.

- ATA133 allows for 48-bit LBA addressing. Without this standard, no partitions bigger than 137GB can be recognized by the IDE controller. Or, they might be recognized, but not all the space will show up. Maxtor has some pretty big HDDs that are supposed to come out (320GB), so that is why they created it.

- RAID setups can benefit from more bandwidth. Two HDDs transferring 40MB/s during a read operation would easily saturate an ATA66 controller. ATA100 is pushing it, especially when burst transfers are taken into account.

 

[human2k]

Originally posted by: nclark42

Originally posted by: Classified
WinXP Pro (that old free version downloaded from limewire

I feel that. I downloaded Windows 95, 98, 98SE, 2000, 2000 Advanced Server, ME, and XP. I did, however, purchase WFW 3.11

-Neal

you have sinned.

 

[nclark42]

yeah, i'm just hoping EeyoreX will still love me