hard drives 8mb cache v. 16mb?

[afhouston]

I'm looking at SATA hard drives and it comes down to 8mb vs. 16mb for price and space.

Is there a big difference in performance and if so - what applications benefit most?

I'm mostly looking for programs to load faster. I don't think I will be doing any RAID setups.

 

[KBlair]

Performance will be overall better with 16mb of cache.

 

[b1gapl]

It's not only hard drives that contribute to how fast a program will load. Theres also ram, cpu speed, and the rpm speed of the hard drive. I don't think 16mb cache is a big difference in performance from 8mb cache.

 

[afhouston]

did a little more research and it seems the 8 vs 16mb difference is only relevant in database stuff.

however, it seems that 2 80gig sata drives will run faster than a 160 if I do end up with a RAID 0 config.

I was mostly debating to get a 160 gig with 16mb vs an 80gig with 8mb. The 80gig drive is definitely cheaper.