Hi all, I'm about to add a 250gb Sata 11 Hdd to my PC. I have a choice between 8mb and 16mb Buffer Cache for a 20% price increase or I could have a larger capacity drive for the extra money.
Am I best to spend my money on a bigger Cache or Hard Drive. Please.
Larger Buffer or more GigaBytes?
Moderator: Ken Berry
I'm guessing a bit here, but I'd go for the bigger drive. As I understand it, the cache only helps if you are reading the data more than once. So, it might help if you are processing a very short video clip over and over... maybe trying different filter settings or something.
The cache is going to speed-up the instantaneous response. It's not going to speed-up continuous data transfer. The continuous data transfer rate is still limited by how fast it can write/read data to/from the hard drive platters.
It might make your system a bit more "snappy", but if you are rendering or saving a big file, it's not going to make much difference.
If you were running a database on a server, it might make a huge speed difference. (Several users reading and writing little bits of data, all trying to access different parts of the hard drive at the same time.)
The cache is going to speed-up the instantaneous response. It's not going to speed-up continuous data transfer. The continuous data transfer rate is still limited by how fast it can write/read data to/from the hard drive platters.
It might make your system a bit more "snappy", but if you are rendering or saving a big file, it's not going to make much difference.
If you were running a database on a server, it might make a huge speed difference. (Several users reading and writing little bits of data, all trying to access different parts of the hard drive at the same time.)
[size=92][i]Head over heels,
No time to think.
It's like the whole world's
Out of... sync.[/i]
- Head Over Heels, The Go-Gos.[/size]
No time to think.
It's like the whole world's
Out of... sync.[/i]
- Head Over Heels, The Go-Gos.[/size]
Hey Roy,
good to see that you have 3 partitions on your primary drive. I just can't believe that there are people out there with EVERYTHING on a single partition! They can't defrag very often!
Anyway, you'll get noticeable benefits from having a second physical hard drive, whether it has an 8MB or 16MB cache. Although my experience is limited to IDE drives, I've found that smart rendering avi clips is much quicker - like by a factor of about three - if you render to another drive. Presumably it relates to I/O, and you're making use of two physical read/write heads. Not that smart rendering avi clips necessarily makes up much of your video editing time, but every little helps. The benefits are far less for MPEG2 clips.
I would therefore recommend the larger 8MB cache drive too - and I'm sure you'll split it up into a few partitions.
Old IDE drives don't die, though - they can just end up in USB enclosures, a more convenient alternative to optical storage. It reminds me of a favourite book I read as a kid, about a steam shovel. It became obsolete, and sad, when all the new-fangled diesel diggers came in, but ended it's days as a heating boiler in a school.... probably that one where there was that carbon monoxide shock-horror thing...!
good to see that you have 3 partitions on your primary drive. I just can't believe that there are people out there with EVERYTHING on a single partition! They can't defrag very often!
Anyway, you'll get noticeable benefits from having a second physical hard drive, whether it has an 8MB or 16MB cache. Although my experience is limited to IDE drives, I've found that smart rendering avi clips is much quicker - like by a factor of about three - if you render to another drive. Presumably it relates to I/O, and you're making use of two physical read/write heads. Not that smart rendering avi clips necessarily makes up much of your video editing time, but every little helps. The benefits are far less for MPEG2 clips.
I would therefore recommend the larger 8MB cache drive too - and I'm sure you'll split it up into a few partitions.
Old IDE drives don't die, though - they can just end up in USB enclosures, a more convenient alternative to optical storage. It reminds me of a favourite book I read as a kid, about a steam shovel. It became obsolete, and sad, when all the new-fangled diesel diggers came in, but ended it's days as a heating boiler in a school.... probably that one where there was that carbon monoxide shock-horror thing...!
JVC GR-DV3000u Panasonic FZ8 VS 7SE Basic - X2
...if you render to another drive.... and you're making use of two physical read/write heads.
Interesting point! I hadn't thought about that. Ive had one drive dedicated to audio/video... Now, I'll have to think about my system configuration a bit more... But, I have thought that they should make a special A/V drive with separate read & write heads. I've thought about what the drive head is doing when you are reading & writing at the same time, like when a TiVo is delaying a broadcast, or recording one broadcast while playing another. The head is jumping back & forth like crazy between the read position and the write position, in order to keep the read & write buffers full. (I guess this really isn't a problem as long as the drive's access time is fast enough.)
[size=92][i]Head over heels,
No time to think.
It's like the whole world's
Out of... sync.[/i]
- Head Over Heels, The Go-Gos.[/size]
No time to think.
It's like the whole world's
Out of... sync.[/i]
- Head Over Heels, The Go-Gos.[/size]