Will a 7200.11 32mb cache greatly outperfom my current hdd?

mmm probably not. the only real benifit of getting a 32mb cashe i think is if you have vista. that way vista is has more buffer room for its constant hard drive acessing. although i hear the 7200.11 is a lot better than previous versions. not sure why.

ill be getting vista but 90$ for a little performance increase... no ty :-)

The thing that really makes a difference in hard drive performance is:

Seek time - this is based on a combination of things including rpms (spindle speed)

Aerial density - how close the 1s and 0s are to each other on the same platter.

Cache size makes almost no difference and here is why:

because after the cache is "filled" it has to be written to the harddrive by the write head onto the platters...and the mechanical part is much, much slower...

When reading the drive has to read off of the platter, if the computer is busy and the cache get's filled while loading, it get's emptied in just a split second by the computer and your back to reading off of the harddrive.

Files are never put all in one spot, with IDE (sata too), they are kinda chopped up and put all over the place and any empty "holes" get filled with little bits...this makes your read write head go all over and slows down your speeds even more....

just some rough math...say you are loading a level that is 200 megs, or a program....

sata 150 has a read write speed from the buffer of about 150 megs per sec max, sata 2 ..aka sata 300 300 meg sec max....

so...after your 32 meg buffer is "filled" in 1/10th of a second or so when writing that leaves about 168 megs to read, once that buffer is emptied, or being read to and filled at the same time even, your data gets read straight from the hard drive at the maximum mechanical speed of the drive...well minus any looking for file bits...and that speed is always slower than your buffers.

Hope this helps, also seek times make a bigger real life difference than straight transfer rates because of how I said the drive electronics kind of spray parts of files wherever there is space.

I'm not sure about that, if anything my Vista uses my HDDs less than my XP installation. Vista even turns the HDD off when its not in use.
SP1 fixed the access problem.

Actually, the cache has little to do with the operating system - it's entirely controlled by the hard drive itself.

As for the 7200.11? They don't really utilize the 32MB cache properly, but they still outperform the .10's, and will definitely be faster than your .9. They could get even more benefit if it were really used properly, but they still outperform the 16MB cache models, and the increase in density means the sequentials are much faster as well (near the OD, it can approach and even briefly exceed 100MB/s continuous)

Look here at specs... Samsung 32mb vs Seagate 16mb, Seagate has better times...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Yeah i agree, Getting a new HD just for 32mb is pointless. Now if you need more room and you happend to need one then yeah get a 32mb just cause its better. But for O/S improvements like speed a raptor or raid 0 setup might be little better.

really hm i didn't notice any difference when i installed sp1. i have to check. thats great news if it does.