is this true?

[GloriousGamer321]

the more cache you have the faster your storage is

[Radium_Angel]

It's only one part of the overall speed of your drive.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, GloriousGamer321 said:

the more cache you have the faster your storage is

There is no yes or no answer here.

 

Your storage will always be as slow as the slowest link.

 

A cache is just a FASTER buffer to catch data to then write it to the slower storage.

 

It does NOT improve read times unless the data is still in the cache or you are caching frequently used data in the cache.

[Jurrunio]

Does adding nitrous system to your car count as making it faster when it only lasts a few seconds before you need a new tank of it?

[GloriousGamer321]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Does adding nitrous system to your car count as making it faster when it only lasts a few seconds before you need a new tank of it?

if i knew the answer i wouldn't post this post

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, GloriousGamer321 said:

if i knew the answer i wouldn't post this post

It's an answer the form of a question. A comparison to another thing.

[tikker]

2 hours ago, GloriousGamer321 said:

if i knew the answer i wouldn't post this post

Think of cache as a little bit of RAM for your drive. The idea is to have a certain amount of fast storage as a buffer. One use of this buffer can be to store recently or frequently used data, such that when it is requested again, it is available faster than if it had to be retrieved from the disk itself. You can also use it as a write buffer, effectively transferring data much faster. If I'm not mistaken, this is what Windows does (used to do?) when you let it "improve" your USB drive's performance: it'll use RAM as a cache, and then in the background write it to the USB drive. The effectiveness in that regard is limited by cache size.

 

Say you use a 256 MB cache as a write buffer for a HDD. If you transfer a 200 MB file it can transfer that quickly to the cache, and then slowly transfer it to the platter. In this case it would be faster than a drive with no cache. If you transfer an 800 MB file, however, it'll quickly fill up the 256 MB, but will then be limited by how quickly the HDD can write it to the platters. Files smaller than the cache will thus transfer quickly, but files larger than it will only transfer quickly for the initial part and then still just transfer at the drive's own speed. The same holds true for many sequential transfers, as the drive will need time to empty the cache. If you fill it up quicker than it can empty it, transfers will slow down as well.

 

In the car analogy: do you really have a faster car if you can go 200 km/h for 2 seconds, but after that and generally can only do 120 km/h? In terms of computers, do you really have a faster drive if you can transfer a 32 MB file to it at turbo speed, but will realistically always be limited to normal speed?