IDE HDD with 2mb vs 8mb buffer ???

[Roy Wilkins]

What is the difference between a harddrive that has 2 mb buffer & 8mb buffer?
both ide drives has the same 7200rpm & they are ata100.... thx

[Psycho Logical]

6 MB. :D

Sorry, couldn't resist.

The larger buffer would help if you work with database or other large files.

[miggetyMike]

hahahahahaha!!!!!....oh man just popped in and saw "6 MB. " hahahaha......aww man...Im out.

[bassman]

The ddrive's performance is really enhanced due to the larger buffer...expect it to be really speedy ;)

[otheos]

IDE, with it's simple FIFO commands hardly benefits from a larger cache. So don't expect the 6MB increase to make any spectacular difference in performance. I bet you won't even notice unless you use IOmeter to benchmark. What makes a bit of difference is the cache management that WD uses, that it's too agressive and shows a nice increase in performance. Still nothing noticeable in day to day use, only benchmarks or heavy useage.

Oh and understand that benchmarks are able to show (and exaggerate a bit on) a 3-5% difference, but trust me you cant. So unless the price is right, don't worry too much, 2MB are plenty and there are other more important factors on a hard drive performance in single user conditions, mainly low access times (at which the WD are not the fastest). Also, make sure you subtract a bit of hype that surrounds all commodity hardware (like overclocking mobo's etc).