Gaming mb cache

[sam1996]

I am currently looking to upgrade my computers hard drive but i am unsure of which one to get.
I currently have three choices but i am willing to look around at other hard drives. The two choices are

1). Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATAII 16MB Cache
link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Ca...5500&sr=8-6

2). Generic Hard Disk Drive 500GB SATA II Max Cache 16mb
link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Generic-Hard-Disk-...5500&sr=8-8

3). Seagate OEM 500GB Barracuda 7200.12 Internal Hard Disk Drive (7200RPM, SATA, 32MB Cache)
link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-OEM-Barrac...5500&sr=8-9

I am not sure which of the following drives are better and which make is better. This may sound dumb but i am also unsure of what "Cache" is, so please help. As you would have seen all the drives are 500gb and under 50 pounds.
Please Help!

 

[FAST6191]

Magnetic hard drives work by reading different magnetic domains on a platter and they often augment this by having some extra (fast) memory onboard to store data on a temporary basis otherwise known as cache space or buffer space.
In theory more allows you more space to store data for fast reads but in practice once you get to 16 megabytes it makes little, if any, difference (I could probably make the case for 8 to 16 not making all that much difference).

Avoid the generic one: skimping on £10 for a drive that will be with you for years is not such a good idea.
That makes it between the WD and Seagate; two good drive makers but the Seagate would take it for me, not to mention it has a 3 year warranty vs a 5 year ones if you care about that sort of thing.

 

[Lee79]

If your Computer has SATA II get the Western Digital I have one of these quite and reliable. If not get the Seagate drive

 

[sam1996]

Thanks alot!
istill doint understand what lee79 was saying aboput if you have a sata 11 get the western digetal how do i know if i have sata11 and why does it matter?
please help but thanks for your replys youve been lots of help

 

[Lee79]

Get the Seagate then. There is not much different in speed between SATA and SATA II. But SATA II allows you to use AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) and NCQ (native command queuing). Which I doubt you will use as you do not know enough about PC hardware to understand but you can read up on it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA

To find out if you PC has SATA II download HWINFO32> http://www.hwinfo.com/download32.html and google your Motherboard Model/Chipset.

 

[sam1996]

Okay Thanks alot.
You are alot of help

 

[sam1996]

so 32 mb cache compared to 16 mb cache is more important than sata drive compared to sata 2 drive?

 

[UltraMagnus]

out of those, go for the seagate, the WD one doesn't even state what platter speed (the rpm bit) it is. If you can it would be better to find a 10,000 rpm drive though

 

[Joe88]

its 7200 RPM
its the same exact drive I bought
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136073

 

[xJonny]

The WD is probably a good choice, would recommend strongly that you don't get the generic one.

To UltraMagnus above: 10k rpm isn't really necessary, they usually become quite noisy, quite hot, come in smaller capacities and are expensive.

 

[Raki]

To UltraMagnus above: 10k rpm isn't really necessary, they usually become quite noisy, quite hot, come in smaller capacities and are expensive.

and they'll die faster

 

[Maz7006]

To UltraMagnus above: 10k rpm isn't really necessary, they usually become quite noisy, quite hot, come in smaller capacities and are expensive.

and they'll die faster

*much faster

my dual raptor x drives died in under 2 years