Hard Drive- Buffer Size difference????

[freak_in_cage_10k]

Hi All,

i need to upgrade my hard drive- here is what i know:

HD makes quite a difference when capturing, and also encoding etc. i am dismissing SCSI drives, i only want a IDE one

For my budget i can offord either:

120GIG, 2 Meg Buffer Maxtor Hard drive
80 Gig, 8 Meg Buffer maxtor drive

So, my question is how much difference to speed/performance/stability etc does the extra cache go,and will the difference be noticeable when encoding (i dont capture much, but i may wish to in the future)

i have checked out toms hardware and andtech but they dont seem to have any suitable articles, any advice would be appreciated!

PS i dont mind which make of HD i use, i was just using the maxtors as an example.

[i_am_dave]

How do you do your production?

Do you render back to DV and then encode? If so, then a larger buffer might make a difference.

If you render to MPEG directly, then it won't make much of a difference.

I think I would go for the 120Gig drive.
For capture or encoding, the buffer size will not make that much difference. I am not really sure that it will matter a lot for rendering either.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

i dont do n e capturing etc, yet, but i may get around to it in the summer

at the moment i just encode from dvd 2 cvd, but i sometimes like to encode several movies and then burn then, hence i would like the extra space. i know capturing etc takes up loads ofspace which is why i would like the extra 40 gigs if i can get it!

also, i play a few games, doom 3 will take up LOADS of space!

n e idea where i can find a hard drive com[parason?

[freak_in_cage_10k]

i have been chatting with my collegues at www.futuremark.com and they assured me that the 8 meg buffer would dramatically increase speed- thought it might be a cheapoer version of raid

n e 1 else got n e comments?

[Xtasy2002]

I used to use 2MB buffer drives.

Then I tried out some 8MB buffer drives.

I'm never looking back to 2MB again. This should answer your question? 8MB is that much better and that's all my box does all day 24/7 is video encode so the difference is startlingly obvious IMHO

[subclubkid]

man at newegg right now they have a 120GB WesternDigital HD with an 8MB cache, and its on sale for $106.00


Thats a great deal

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=property&DEPA=1

[ahackhack]

Cnet compares everything it seems



You can get a 200Gb HD for just under $200USD now. What kind of money are you looking at?

You should get at least 7200rpm, and you should be aces either way. If you do start capturing, however, uncompressed video is a monster. For example, an hour of Huffy style AVI capture will fill up the better part of 60GB!

[gmatov]

Freak,
Where the heck were you last week when I was telling everyone to go to Staples for a 160 gig Maxtor, 8meg buffer, ATA133 card, and cable for 80 bucks after 80 buck rebate. I bought 2. Got slight arguments about rebates, but you couldn't beat that deal with a stick. Considering the card goes for 50, you basically got the drive for 20 bucks and tax on 150. 30 bucks tops.Too late now. Sorry.

[gmatov]

Freak,
Ignore my last. Just read you in the nerd thing and realized you're in the UK, couldn't have bought the damn thing anyhow. Now I'm sorrier than the expressed regrets in the last. You're left out on this one.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

Xtasy2002- yeah dude, i think i will go for the 8 meg buffer. HOWEVER, there is now the issue of whether i should get a SATA drive. it looks like maxtor have the leading drives at the moment, an 80 gig SATA (7200rpm) is about £80. i have done a little research on sata and basically i need a card (cos my MB doesn;t have the slots) but because of it you get blistering speed, basically a real cheap version of raid (prob faster!!).

i dont capture at the moment, but may wish to in the future, but, as i just encode and play games i wonder if a SATA drive is overkill???

Has anyone had any experience of the new SATA drives??

gmatov- yeah yeah, blagh blagh, you americans get stuff SO much cheaper!!!! i would pay much more than that in POUNDS for that western digital drive!!! Grrrrrrrrrr its not fair!

i think my budget is about £80 really, so SATA is within my reach, but i dont want to spend much more than that really, £100 tops, i think i am just gonna have to buy a PC mag with a decent hard drive review in it!!!

[Faustus]

Personally I don't know how fast SATA will be until we get away from the PCI bus, then its time for that particular standard to sing.

I say go for a 8mb Cache drive as large as you can get and be happy. It DOES make a difference. Sadly I purchased my 2 80GB Deskstars mearly weeks before the 8mb thing started... made me want to cry.

[SatStorm]

A dedicated 2MB buffer HD only for grabbing don't have issues with the proccess. You grabb, you encode, you format and so on. No frame drops that way, no issues, nothing.

8MB from the other hand, do help a lot the proccess if you don't like to format your HD all the time and IF you use the same HD for other things also, as all of us do.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

ok, cheers a lot lads. i have pretty much made up my mind about getting a 7200rpm hard drive with an 8 meg buffer.

HOWEVER- i am still uncertain about the pros & cons of a SATA drive! ok, so they are much faster etc, basically as fast as raid 1, but would this difference in speed be significant enough to justtify the cost, when all i am doing is encoding & playing games!?

Anyone know???

[bugster]

ok, cheers a lot lads. i have pretty much made up my mind about getting a 7200rpm hard drive with an 8 meg buffer.

HOWEVER- i am still uncertain about the pros & cons of a SATA drive! ok, so they are much faster etc, basically as fast as raid 1, but would this difference in speed be significant enough to justtify the cost, when all i am doing is encoding & playing games!?

Anyone know???

AFAIK, SATA drives are identical to IDE drives, only the data interface has changed. As it is almost impossible for a drive to deliver data (or write data) at a sustained rate even approaching the 100Mbps that IDE provides, then increasing the data transfer speed to the 150 of SATA will make little difference.

So for capturing and encoding, where you are handling large files, I doubt SATA will help. If you are handling lots of small files it probably does provide a performance boost.

Hope this helps.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

ok- cheers a lot bugster! looks like i will just get a 120 gig 7200 rpm hard drive then (with a 8 meg buffer!)