External HD cache

[kstatefan40]

I have seen a lot of people here talk about wanting a HD w/ 8 MB cache over a 2 MB one. But those were all on internal drives. Will it matter if it is an external (USB 2.0 or firewire) drive?

[TwoRails]

Sure! It's still an improvement in performance.

TwoRails

[kstatefan40]

Will it be noticeable? I will be transfering Digital Video and Photography to it.

[Cricket]

Originally posted by kstatefan40
Will it be noticeable? I will be transfering Digital Video and Photography to it. If you're just transferring data...no, it won't be noticeable.

A straight transfer will only involve the rotational speed of the drive and the drive head ability to extract the data from the platters.

The performance improvement comes when the drive is accessed many times for the same information or data bits.

If you're using the external drive as normal storage of large files (like AutoCAD files) and the system has to go back and forth to the external hard drive for data, then you'll notice a increase in performance because some of the data is stored in cache (which is basically very fast RAM) instead of the drive platters. Reading data off the platters is a lot slower than getting the data from cache.

:) Cricket

[kstatefan40]

THANKS! Thats what i needed to know.