Cache Sizes/SSD's?

[10hellfire01]

Hey everyone! In all the years I've been learning about computers, and the best parts, etc. I've never actually realized how a cache size of a hard drive affects the drive and the computer's performance? Could someone explain to me basically what the cache size benefits and adds to the overall performance say verses that of something of an 8mb cache compard to that of a 64mb cache?

 

[sminlal]

There really isn't a lot of difference between drives of different cache sizes. If a drive had NO cache, then it would be noticeably slower, but the drive manufacturers put enough cache on them to make them perform pretty much optimally. Adding more cache beyond that doesn't really buy you anything (if it did, then there would be more competition and marketing around cache sizes).

Larger drives need larger caches because the most important function of the cache is to buffer tracks of data being read or written, and as more data is packed onto each track (with each new generation of drives) the caches have to increase to hold the additional data.