FW Hard Drive Buffer Cache

[TyWahn]

I just bought a FireWire HD .. 7200 RPM 160 GB ... but it only has 2 MB Buffer Cache

Can somebody tell me if I will notice any significant difference, or problems as opposed to one with say 8 MB buffer.

I bought it to use as my "media" drive .. all my music, and also to edit videos with ... etc.

Thanks....

 

[daveL]

Since your disk I/O will be mainly sequential, I doubt you'll notice any difference. Drives with 8 MB cache are relatively new, and the benchmarks I've seen don't show much of a difference.

 

[Macmaniac]

IF you were doing a lot of video editing the buffer cache might come into play. When you are going through a lot of video at once the drive needs the xtra cache to keep up. If your doing light work it should not matter.

 

[daveL]

IF you were doing a lot of video editing the buffer cache might come into play. When you are going through a lot of video at once the drive needs the xtra cache to keep up. If your doing light work it should not matter.

So, you're telling last year's 2 MB cache drives couldn't cut it? I guess it depends on what kind of video we're talking about, e.g. raw, SD or HD DV.

 

[TyWahn]

So, you're telling last year's 2 MB cache drives couldn't cut it? I guess it depends on what kind of video we're talking about, e.g. raw, SD or HD DV.

I will be editing video imported from iMovie ... from my Digital8 Sony Camcorder ... does that make any difference?

Thanks again!

 

[daveL]

I will be editing video imported from iMovie ... from my Digital8 Sony Camcorder ... does that make any difference?

Thanks again!

I think you're good to go. If you're worried about it, just do a test. If you go over to barefeats.com, you'll find actual benchmark results, if you look around a bit.