How much does 8 MB buffer matter in a hard drive?

[Johnbear007]

If I got a 120GB western digital SE with 8 mb buffer, how much faster would it be than the 2 mb buffer? and is it worth it?

my system is :

ECS k7S5a
AThlon XP 1700+
20 GB IBM 7200 RPM HD
512 MB SDR SDRAM
128 MB Radeon 8500
48x Cendyne Burner
16x DVD ROM
Diamond Monster sound MX300 (Aureal 2.0)


thanks

 

[Kingofcomputer]

The price difference is so small, sounds nothing. It's worth to get 8MB buffer version.
Unless you're building 100s or 1000s computers to make profit, you could make more profit by using 2MB buffer or even 5400rpm to cut corner.

 

[Darein]

You won't really notice any speed improvement in daily use, but if you move large files or edit them, like movies and pictures, it will speed up reaction time. The warrenty on the SE is also 3 years vrs. 1 for most other harddrives.

 

[cutty]

I remember that only 8MB JB edition HD comes with 3 years warranty, both AB and BB have only 1 year warranty now.
I think you should try to get a JB.

 

[warrenpeace]

I don't know if it is due to the buffer size or if it just a better drive, but i bought the 80 gig JB and had an 80 gig Maxtor (2mb buffer). The WD scored signifficantly higher than the Maxtor in Sandra, which i realise doesn't mean much, but it was also noticably faster in day to day use.

Maxtor is now also making drives with 8mb buffers, their "ultra Series" which they claim are 20% faster in winbench 99 tests.

I bought one of the maxtor 8 meg drives (fluid bearing as well), but i immediately striped it with my WD JB in a RAID array. I CAN tell you this... 2 8meg buffer drives in a raid array are very very noticably faster than the Wester Dig JB alone or any single drive i have used (granted i have never had any SCSI drives).