HDD Upgrade Suggestions

[sohaibrazzaq]

Its been quite a while that i posted on videohelp forums, hi everyone.
I am looking forward for an hdd upgrade, the current hdd in the PC where i am looking to upgrade is a Seagate 80 GB SATA 8MB cache, i don't use this computer much for video editing or capturing, more specifically, this is my hardcore gaming PC and now i frequently run out of disk space, i am thinking to purchase a 320GB hdd and i have two choices :
Seagate 320GB 7200RPM SATA-II 8MB Cache
or
WESTERN DIGITAL 320GB 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache
the price difference b/w both is minor, actually i myself preffer seagate and i have always used seagate hdds but now the problem is that seagate don't have 16mb cache hdd in 320gb range and i don't want to spend $50+ to buy a 400GB seagate hdd with 16MB cache because i am soon gonna upgrade my GPU to 8800GTX, now which one will you recommend me? Is there any large performance difference b/w 8MB cache and 16MB cache, also i heard from some of my friend that western digital hdd's creates lots of noise. Is it true?
Last question is that is it worth selling my old hdd or should i keep it? If i keep it then will it slow down my new hdd as well?
Thanks,
Sohaib

[Ron B]

The Seagate 320G drive you are considering must be a 7200.9, if I were you, I would spend the extra few bucks for the 320G 7200.10 model. It is an excellent drive, very fast. I have four of these drives, they are super for video work or as a fast boot drive. It has a 16MB cache, that's not the big deal, the 7200.10 Perpendicular Recording drives are way better than the previous 7200.9 models.

[sohaibrazzaq]

Look here :
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html?modelx=33&model1=137&model2=366&chart=36

WD Caviar SE16 (7200 RPM, 16 MB Cache SATA/300) is listed way down then WD Caviar SE (7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache SATA/300), whats going on there??? A hdd with 16MB cache is supposed to be faster then 8MB cache, am i right?
I am becoming much more confused now. Plz some answers.

[Krispy Kritter]

Cache mainly comes into use when you frequently open/close small files. When moving large amounts of data or while launching apps/games, cache size doesn't have much affect.

Personally, I would stick with Seagate, but that's just me.


As to your reference above, if I am looking at the correct drives you are referring to, they are both different sizes (320 & 500). Which means the platter sizes are different. Platter size, among other things, affect speed.

[oldandinthe way]

I don't think there is very much difference between the drives.

Look for a good deal soon, while they are phasing out the older drives in favor of perpendicular recording. Perpendicular recording allows the manufacturer to cram more data in a smaller space - principally yielding a cost reduction. An argument could be made for fewer components improving reliability, but an equally strong argument could be made for greater density reducing reliability.

The older drives on the market are mature products with good histories and carry little risk.

[Ron B]

I have WD, Maxtor, Hitachi and Seagate SATA and PATA drives, that 320G Seagate 7200.10 is the best of the lot. On those Tom's Hardware charts, look how close this drive is to the WD Raptors as far as performance goes, then add 120G of storage.