hard drive and cache

[lodore]

Hello,
some 500gb hard drives and larger have 16mb cache and some have 32mb cache does tha extra 16mb cache make much difference?

atm i have maxtor 250gb hard drives with 8mb cache.
i have two of them.
im kinda thinking about getting a faster boot drive and wondering if it will be much faster
what would you reccomend?
just to note the extra GB's dont matter its the speed and quietness that is important for my new boot drive.
thanks in advance
lodore

[LegacyOne]

Anything more then 8-16MB cache just helps when writhing to the drive.

[hermeticist]

The extra cache is only really any use if the drive is optimised to use it.

Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD6400AAKS)

The above HDD uses 2 x 320GB platters & is faster than most (all?) 500GB drives. I think only the samsung F1 (using similar 300+GB platters & currently available in 1TB) is faster in the 7200RPM/SATA section of the market.