 |
 |
2Mb or 8Mb cache on hard drive. Does it make much difference?
|
|
|
|
|
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: London, UK
Status:
Offline
|
|
Hi,
I'm about to buy a firewire external drive for my powerbook. I see some drives have 2mb caches and some 8Mb.
In the real world, and across firwire, will the cache size make any appreciable difference?
Many thanks,
J.
|
|
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out - Richard Dawkins
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Admin Emeritus  Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Status:
Offline
|
|
A tiny difference at best.
tooki
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: London, UK
Status:
Offline
|
|
Thanks,
just what I needed to know.
Cheers,
J.
|
|
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out - Richard Dawkins
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mac Elite
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Rochester, NY, USA
Status:
Offline
|
|
I actually have a 2MB cache drive and a 8 MB cache drive of the same sizes linked up in a RAID array, and before I did the linking I ran xBench on both drives through the Firewire interface.
I don't have the exact xBench files with me right now, but IIRC there wasn't much difference for the random-access that you might do in normal computing, but there was a measurable (albeit small) difference in linear accesses, like you might do if you were working with large data structures like DV.
My conclusion: Unless you are doing media editing as a full-time job, and doing linear accesses all day, a 2MB cache will probably be sufficient. And two 2MB cache drives configured in a striped RAID array will be faster than a single 8MB drive of twice the size. 
(I bought a dual-drive FW enclosure off of E-bay in order to get the RAID array working...)
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: London, UK
Status:
Offline
|
|
I hadn't considered running raid. I've bought a 120Gb drive and single enclosure. Perhaps 2x60Gb would have been better, but there you go. I'll consider another drive if funds become available.
J.
|
|
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out - Richard Dawkins
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Madison, WI
Status:
Offline
|
|
Originally posted by Freeflyer:
I hadn't considered running raid. I've bought a 120Gb drive and single enclosure. Perhaps 2x60Gb would have been better, but there you go. I'll consider another drive if funds become available.
J.
2x60 gives you 2x the failure points with minimal performance gain. I wouldn't.
|
|
OS X: Where software installation doesn't require wizards with shields.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 
|
|
|
Forum Rules
|
|
|
|
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is Off
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Top
