I need to buy a new hard drive for my laptop and in shopping I’m seeing 2.5″ drives that have 16MB cache. However they run at 5400rpms. I was going to replace it with another 7200rpm drive, which has a noticable difference in performance over the 4800rpm drives.
So what would you think would be better: 7200rpm with 8MB cache or 5400rpm with 16MB cache?
I would think the 7200rpms would be more benificial, but I would just like someone elses input.
Update: Well, I’ve made up my mind. After posting this I found this article at Toms Hardware, clearly stating that the 7200rpm drive outperforms all others and the Toshiba drives with the 16MB of cache didn’t fair well at all. I can’t wait because the spare drive I’m running on now is only 4800rpm and it is ssslllloooowwwww!
I’d have gone for the faster disk too – afterall, 16mb od cache data is probably not a lot when it comes to the files people use nowadays and so the retrieval of that information needs to be as fast as possible.
I was suprised to see that there were disks still on sale at that speed – i thought nearly all disks were at least 5000+ rpm’s