Hard Drive Cache

[erty176]

Hi LTT community,
 

I was wondering, what does it mean for a Hard Disk Drive to have cache? Like say for example, the hard drive i am going to pull out of my computer has 8 MB of cache, whereas the one I'm putting in has 64 MB of cache.

[spartaman64]

it stores frequently used data so you can access it faster

[x Relentless Xx]

Hi LTT community,

 

I was wondering, what does it mean for a Hard Disk Drive to have cache? Like say for example, the hard drive i am going to pull out of my computer has 8 MB of cache, whereas the one I'm putting in has 64 MB of cache.

Hard Drive Cache or Disk Buffer is just the stored memory in a hard drive, doesnt make a difference anymore that much

[spartaman64]

its basically ram on the hard drive and it speeds up read and writes by a little but not that much

[erty176]

it stores frequently used data so you can access it faster

Will I feel a speed increase going from 8 to 64?

Hard Drive Cache or Disk Buffer is just the stored memory in a hard drive, doesnt make a difference anymore that much

[spartaman64]

Will I feel a speed increase going from 8 to 64?

it doesnt hurt but dont switch it out just for that reason

[x Relentless Xx]

Will I feel a speed increase going from 8 to 64?

No, cache doesnt really effect HDD performance anymore.

[erty176]

it doesnt hurt but dont switch it out just for that reason

I wasn't. I was switching it because 1 TB> 320 GB

[spartaman64]

I wasn't. I was switching it because 1 TB> 320 GB

it wouldnt make a big difference the speed of the drive itself will make the most difference

[Captain_WD]

Hi LTT community,

 

I was wondering, what does it mean for a Hard Disk Drive to have cache? Like say for example, the hard drive i am going to pull out of my computer has 8 MB of cache, whereas the one I'm putting in has 64 MB of cache.

 

 

Hey erty176,

 

As the guys mentioned, cache does affect the performance, but it is not the most important thing. It stores some frequently used files or pre-loads files that are going to be loaded from or written to the drive. Modern HDDs are fast enough not to be impacted that heavily from smaller amount of cache, but still there should be a difference between a 8MB and 64MB amount of cache.  

 

Captain_WD.