Hard Drive Purchase

[TheSpeedoBeast]

I am going to go out and buy a new hard drive, and I am not sure if I want the samsung 80gb serial ata hard drive with a 8mb cache, or the 80gb samsung 133 ata 2mb cache. Is it worth it to fork over the extra $12 for a bigger cache, or should I just save my cash and get the 2mb one? Let me know if the performance increase is worth it.

[fatTrav]

personally, I have two 80 gb Western Digitial drives, one with a 2 mb and the other with a 8mb cache. I have had better performance with the 8 mb one than with the 2 mb one. SLIGHTLY better performance. Nothing like out of this world. See the below for what I am talkin about. hda has a 2 mb and hdb has a 8 mb cache.

[root@grendel 3:00PM travis]# hdparm -t -T /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1224 MB in 2.00 seconds = 612.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 140 MB in 3.01 seconds = 46.51 MB/sec
[root@grendel 3:01PM travis]# hdparm -t -T /dev/hdb

/dev/hdb:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1264 MB in 2.00 seconds = 632.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 140 MB in 3.03 seconds = 46.20 MB/sec

I don't think it is really worth it. I haven't noticed any real gains. I say pend the $12 on a better mouse or keyboard and not on hard drives.

That's my opinion anyways

Travis

[MorphiusFaydal]

but then theres the fact that the 8mb cache one is SATA, not IDE

do you have SATA ports on your mobo or an SATA expansion card?

[fatTrav]

over looked that i did.

mine are both ide.

i don't think serial ata is a whole lot faster but it has a lot more bandwidth. correct me if i am wrong please.

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Yeah, I have onboard mobo ports; does that change the performance issues?

[plonka2000]

My SATA drives are a world faster than my older IDE drives.

I'd definetly recommend it. Also, besides, all drives are going to be SATA at some point anyway so apart from future-proofing yourself you're also gaining a faster drive.

SATA runs at 150M/sec at the moment and the fastest IDE runs at 133MB/sec (and technically you never get that performance from an IDE drive anyway, the cables just dont carry the bandwidth hence why ATA133 drives are quite scarce these days). SATA drives use newer technologies.

It all depends on your controller though, as I have an onboard VIA SATA controller and also a PCI Sil 3112a controller. The Onboard is blistering fast while the PCI somehow isnt as fast. But then the Sil 3112a was a cheapo choice at the time.

Bottom line is I'd say from my experience its a definet advantage, and the 8MB cache makes a big difference when you access many files or random drive access (Games, databases, compiling software, formatting the drive, etc...).

What motherboard do you have?

[gehidore]

i say sata. especially for 12 more.

[armando]

It's twelve bucks =) just do it you are going to kick your self if you don't

[MorphiusFaydal]

Originally posted by plonka2000
It all depends on your controller though, as I have an onboard VIA SATA controller and also a PCI Sil 3112a controller. The Onboard is blistering fast while the PCI somehow isnt as fast. But then the Sil 3112a was a cheapo choice at the time.

its not really the fact that the card was cheap more than the fact that you are having to shuttle the data through a PCI port.. thats slowing things down a bit..

if the same controller was built in onboard, you probably would find it being about the same speed as the VIA chip

[canon006]

I've got an onboard sil3112a (Abit board) and it really suprised me how much more responsive everything is with SATA drives, I'd say it's definitely worth an extra $12.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by plonka2000
and the 8MB cache makes a big difference when you access many files or random drive access (Games, databases, compiling software, formatting the drive, etc...). No, it actually doesn't, not with proper OS pagecache, anyway (and no, Windows does not do it properly).

6 extra megs of cache on the hard drive is vastly overshadowed by your system memory. Linux uses as much of it as it can to cache hard drive data anyway, and system memory is an order of magnitude faster than the IDE or SATA buses (even at their theoretical maximum burst speeds). You don't have to go through the northbridge (for SATA) or the southbridge and northbridge (for IDE). Especially if you go through the southbridge -- the maximum bandwidth on that is somewhere around 100 megabits/sec (the maximum burst transfer rate of ATA100). It depends a bit on which motherboard you have, but I don't think I've ever seen one that goes above 150 megabits.

The northbridge <--> memory (via DMA) bus is faster than the SB <--> NB bus, but not as fast as the memory <--> processor bus. So it's still a win to keep the data in system memory.

Given that, and given the amount of extra system memory that you have to store pagecache in (right? if not, think about getting some), getting a larger cache on the drive actually makes very little sense. SATA, though, will help when you do have to access the drive, so it's probably worth the $12 if you have the support for SATA.