Here's the scenario. I have 2 hdd's 7200 8mb cache in raid0 and i have 1 hdd 7200 32mb cache standalone. Which is the better option and more so why?

Thanks guys

Hello once again gamerdad007 and welcome back to PCHF,

Il mark this thread open so it attracts out highly skilled tech staff.

Thanks for your patience,

Clever_Duck

Thanks, Duck. I really would love to hear some opinions on this

Cache obviously isn't going to provide as much performance as RAID 0. I wouldn't say either option is better, as there are advantages and disadvantages of RAID 0. The most important of which is performance, but then there's the issue of redundancy. Twice as likely of losing your data with two hard drives that can fail.

Hi

Frankly, I have found no (noticeable) difference performance wise between HDDs with large and small cache (and I have tested hundreds at work)..

You can have a look at this article from Tom's HardwareConclusion - Review Tom's Hardware : Understanding Hard Drive Performance

The one thing that I should point out, however, is that larger cache exists on newer drives, and newer drives are supposed to offer better performance, longer MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) and data security due to innovations in design.

Now how much-if any- of this is attributable to the larger cache remains an issue, as a "cache" is supposed to offer advantages in repetitive tasks.

But that's all that cache really offers, but it depends on what you actually do on a day to day basis. I never look at cache when buying a HDD. 32mb still isn't much. Somebody who does a lot of video editing for example is going to see no benefit, but will do from RAID 0. I would personally rather spend out on a solid state rather than two 7200's running RAID 0. It's redundancy that puts me off every time, but take a look at some of the solid state RAID 0 examples of Windows Vista on YouTube, the results are awesome.

Thanks a lot for the info everyone. I figured I would ask just to see some answers, since it just popped in my head one night. I was just wondering about the two since I was considering dropping the my raid setup.