What's a buffer?

[iNeb]

There is a 60GB WD 2MB buffer 7200RPM for 60$ in sunday ads.

80GB 8MB buffer WD 7200 80$

What's the diff? And what's a buffer

[iNeb]

I'm a newbie to hardware, so what does that mean in english

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t46288.html

The answer is in your other thread.

[nukes]

The actual hard drive is slower than the interface (or vice versa, doesn't matter really) and the buffer is there to keep the drive taking data and let the computer carry on with another job, so instead of haveing to hold it's hand dumping info in, say 512kb blocks, the computer could do it in 2mb blocks and would have to spend less cpu time on it.

[DanU]

Originally posted by brucecampbell
the buffer is the speed it finds the cache in go with the 80

HUH? The buffer is the same as cache.

The cache stores information read from (or written in the case of write caches) to the hard drive. Because the cache stores its information on silicon, it is much faster than the hard disk. The cache "hides" the slow hard drive behind faster RAM. More cache is better because the probability of finding your data in the faster cache is higher.

That's a great price for a 80GB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive. For a measly $20, it's worth the speed and capacity over the other drive.

[davebarnes]

a motorized tool used to polish. Typically used to bring up a nice shine on a car's paint.

[JPMiller]

The cache buffer is a "holding area" made up of memory. When you write to your hard disk, data is transferred from the motherboard to the hard drive where it is placed into the "cache buffer". From the cache buffer, the data is transferred to the platters, where it is written onto the tracks. When information is being read from the disk, the data is transferred from the platters to the cache buffer, then to the motherboard. The cache buffer, in effect, is the pick-up and delivery point for data moving to and from the hard drive. Data that has been recently accessed from the hard drive can be instantly moved from cache memory to the motherboard, without re-accessing the hard drive.
This was blatantly plagerized from...
http://www.upgradehighway.com/upgrade_hard_drive.htm
This is not as "layman" as I would have liked, but is accurate.
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...fer=pricewatch