More "stable"?! Not sure what that means. Also, there are plenty of 8mb
cache HDs being sold w/ 1yr warranties, believe me, I have several. A lot
of the cut-rate, after rebate deals are so cheap NOT because of the cache
(many are 8mb), but the lousy 1yr warranty (sometimes upgradeable to 3yr for
$15-20 via their website support). So if I had a choice of 2mb/1yr warranty
vs. 8mb/3yr warranty, and the difference was $20-30, I'd probably go for the
latter *primarily* for the warranty, NOT cache. Consider the cache increase
a bonus.
The cache size on a modern HD is relatively meaningless. It merely means
that if a file read previously off the platters is requested AGAIN, if it's
still in the cache, AND unchanged since last read, it can be reread from the
much faster cache memory. But frankly, given the limited size overall, how
often will this occur? More importantly, your Windows OS *already* has a
cache!!! And it can be MUCH larger, up to available RAM (in theory). So in
most instances, you'll never get to the HD cache anyway (this is why most
benchmarking tools, like SiSoftware Sandra, temporarily disable the Windows
cache for testing -- it distorts the results). But the fact that it must be
disabled should tell you something -- the HD cache has almost no impact
under real world conditions. Certainly not enough to warrant $30 or more
additional cost. Instead, you should concentrate on optimizations that
impact *actual* HD access, like response time, which is impacted by # of
heads, # of platters, interface (IDE vs. SATA), etc.
Bottomline, don't lose any sleep over HD cache size, its more marketing hype
than anything else.
JMTC
HTH
Jim
