Hitachi 7K250 HD -80GB opinions for OS drive? Only 2 MB buffer...

[kayaksurfer]

I want to buy a new primary/OS drive and got excited about the 80G 7K250 from Hitachi, until I found out it only has a 2MB buffer.
(They're really vague about it, but they say that the 1 platter drives (40/80GB I think) have a 2MB buffer, whilst the larger drives have 8MB.

Should I really care?

Thanks!

 

[DanTMWTMP]

hmm..hitachi desktar eh?....remember ibm deskstars 😛 ...and what happened to those?//...nearly every one of 'em died... 🙁

k i'm sure they got their act together and it'll be fine....

as for the 2mb cache and 8mb cache:
b4 information from the harddrive is sent to the RAM, it sends packets of info to the cache...supposedly an 8mb cache will make this process faster by reducing the amount of cycles it takes to send each bit of information......it really depends on the manufacturer i guess...and from what i hear, the user actually seeing a difference in performance is not that much...and only noticeable when looking @ benchmarks..,..so i guess it's mainly for bragging rights..hehehe

some people mistakely assume that the increased cache will reduce errors...nop..it's all for performance...


some companies just slap on a 8mb chip and say it has 8mb cache oh wow yay....so go check reviews....(http://www.digit-life.com/storage.html has nice ones for harddrives)

i'd personally recommend the WD raptor 🙂 🙂 i have one and YES I DO TELL A PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCE..HUGE HUGE HUGE..ok not that huge but yes very noticeable (heavy applications like photoshop loads up to around 5 seconds faster than my 45 gig 2mb cache maxtor hdd)
yes i knw, raptors are expensive..about 140 for a 36 gig hdd...but i don't regret it...lol why should i, i got it as my bday present..lol..but b4 my friends pitched in their money to get one for me, i was really about to buy it..in fact, i was waiting for my next paycheck lol..and my friends found out my plans somehow and got it for me b4 i could buy it..hahaha


EDIT: corrected link

 

[kayaksurfer]

I'm replacing an old Cheetah 10k SCSI - I just benchmarked it under WinXP and realised how slow it is compared to my IDE drives. I've only endured the noise for this long because I *thought* it was fast...

Any idea if I can run a new U320 drive on an old U160 card?

 

[DanTMWTMP]

Originally posted by: kayaksurfer
I'm replacing an old Cheetah 10k SCSI - I just benchmarked it under WinXP and realised how slow it is compared to my IDE drives. I've only endured the noise for this long because I *thought* it was fast...

Any idea if I can run a new U320 drive on an old U160 card?

you have to get the new controller card 🙁

 

[Zepper]

Perhaps the Cheetah is slow because the one riding herd on it is half fast... 🙂 . And yes, it seems that almost all SCSI drives are backward compatible to a ridiculous degree - you could probably run it on a UW (single-ended) adapter.
. I just bought an old Quantum 10k (U160) drive from hypermicro.com and it seems fast to me running on U2W (80MB/s) adapter.
.bh.
:moon:
p.s. Check out the new line of Samsung drives. Not much slower than the other brands, quiet and 3yr. warranty here in the states (noting the Brit spellings, I'm not sure whether you live in the "colonies" or not).bh.