[Jayce]

So, I'd like a new hard drive to run in my system. Looking at 500gb SATA 3.0gb/s drives.

I have these choices.

Seagate 500gb 32mb Cache - $75
Hitachi 500gb 16mb Cache - $65

Is there a big difference between the two?

[Spit-wad]

I have the Seagate 500gb/32mb. The first once came defective, but I got another one and I haven't had any problems yet.

I'll say this about hard drives. You can get unlucky with every manufacturer... everyone makes drives that fail. Seagate has a 5 yr warranty, most others have 3 or 1.

[Jayce]

Oh I'm not talking about brand. I like both companies. I'm talking STRICTLY from the 10 dollar difference + 16mb difference in the cache buffer. That's all I'm looking at.

If 32mb cache on a hard drive justifies a 10 dollar difference, I'll go for it. But if it's something that's laughable, then I'll save myself 10 bucks, buy 2 gallons of gas, and go with the Hitachi.

What do you folks think?

[Jayce]

Meh. I grabbed the Seagate with the 32mb buffer. Figured for 10 bucks it can't hurt.

So I'll use that as my main drive, and use my two 250gb SATA drives (WD) as backups. (everybody in the house backs up to my computer, hence the reasoning behind the multiple drives)

[Naphtali14]

8 Or 16 MB Buffer - Tom's Hardware : Understanding Hard Drive Performance