harddrive 2mb cache?

kinkstr

i dont understand what this means when it comes to hard drives,ive just seen one for sale in aldi and im just wondering is it any good,as i intend to use the hard drive for mainly gaming

its a westerm digital btw
# Product comes complete with full telephone support
# Manufacturer's three year warranty
# Compatible with most computers
# 250 giga byte internal hard disc drive.
# 7200 rpm
# 2 MB Cache
# 80 GB per pallet for state-of-the-art area density
# Ultra ATA/100- for up to 100 MB/s transfer rates
# Fluid Dynamic Bearings for noise sensitive computing environments

RicardoSmith

Its ok. There are faster drives. Ah I see its €129. It ok nothing special. A drive with 8mb would be a little bit faster. For not much more.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.asp?bn=10089

Random

You may as well go for ATA133 aswell while you're at it. It's a newer standard, slightly faster.

Infini

250GB a lot of memory. Also the larger a disk is the faster it goes as the data's more tightly packed.

kinkstr

would i be better off with this ?

unkel

RicardoSmith wrote:

A drive with 8mb would be a little bit faster. For not much more

The same drive but with 8MB cache is €162 delivered from Komplett. Quite a bit more tbh

ciaranfo wrote:

You may as well go for ATA133 aswell while you're at it. It's a newer standard, slightly faster.

You'd will NOT notice the difference. You'd hardly notice SATA 150 over PATA100. Benefit of SATA is better airflow through case because of tiny cables (both power and data)

kinkstr wrote:

would i be better off with this ?

Again including cheap and slow delivery of €10, it would work out at €0.54 per Gig. The Aldi drive is cheaper at €0.52 per Gig. The Maxtor is 8MB cache which DOES make a difference. I'm no fan of Maxtor though (as long ago as I can remember they were always sub-average speed and sub-average performance with average noise). Search here on boards and you'll be hard pushed to find an experienced person recommending them...

EDIT: best site I use for reviews of hard drives is right here. The established picking order does get disturbed sometimes, like I remember about this time last year with the Samsung Spinpoints taking the lead at that time out of the blue

RicardoSmith

Western Digital 8mb 250gb drive is €152 on komplett. For a machine for gaming I think you'd notice the speed difference. For €23 extra? While all the stats say that the reliability of the different drives brands are all the same, I prefer Seagate myself. Performance noise and warranty would be what I'd be looking in a drive. Tthe difference is €0.02 per mb is neligible. IMO.

unkel

RicardoSmith wrote:

Western Digital 8mb 250gb drive is €152 on komplett

Yes, see my post...

unkel wrote:

The same drive but with 8MB cache is €162 delivered from Komplett. Quite a bit more tbh

RicardoSmith

Theres an echo in here.... My point was that it isn't a lot more. Worth it for gaming. IMO.

SouperComputer

if its going to be your system drive, go with the 8mb cache.

It speeds up the overall responsiveness of the machineandwill make it a bit "preppier"

As for ATA100Vs ATA133, its mostly marketing BS. ATA is the (potential) interface speed. What they dont tell you is that even the fastest of drives peak above 60Mb\s. Of course, if you plan running RAID, thats a different matter, but in most cases, there is rarely any difference between ATA66 & ATA133, drives being equal of course.

SATA in addition to the smaller cables, also has lower CPU utilisation IIRC.

kinkstr

can someone explain the difference between ide and serial ata to me please

Mountjoy Mugger

In a nutshell, SATA has higher bandwith than IDE does. This means faster transfer rates.

kinkstr

will this mobo be compatible with both types

RicardoSmith

kinkstr wrote:

will this mobo be compatible with both types

Yup. Whatcha thinking?

kinkstr

im thinking i have to make sure because as soon as my credit card comes through ill be buying these components from komplett

RicardoSmith

If you are getting a new motherboard you should get a decent SATA drive. 8 or 16mb cache, 7200 speed, good warranty, and quiet. Read some reviews. What capacity you get depends on what you'll be doing. I could get away with an 80gb on my work machine. But my home machine I'd need a lot more. I'm also a fan of getting two drives rather than just one big one. But not everyone would agree with that. Even without using RAID it can be handy having two drives rather than one.

kinkstr

This is what im getting

RicardoSmith

kinkstr wrote:

This is what im getting

Nice. Is the price competitive? Komplett bundles can be dear.

kinkstr

its 315 yo yo's for the upgrade pack,tbh i have'nt looked around as id prefer to buy from komplett