[filmscanners] Re: Slightly OT: Hard Drive Speed

["Moreno Polloni" <mp@dccnet.com>]

> The newer and larger 7200 rpm drives typically have a larger
> cache than the
> older drives, and this would provide a larger performance gain than going
> from an Ultra ATA 66 to Ultra ATA 100.

Do you believe a larger cache helps with large file reads and writes?  For
reads it is no help, and for writes, it's really not much help either.  It
helps for smaller file writes...for sure.  Imaging files are typically very
large, and speed is mostly limited by drive media transfer rate.

------------

The difference in performance between Ultra ATA 66 and Ultra ATA 100 will
vary between make and model of drives of course, but generally, it's quite
minimal. The biggest difference in drive performance would be as a result of
the newer models incorporating newer technology and features to improve hard
disk performance, of which a larger cache plays a significant role. There
aren't that many drives that could saturate an Ultra ATA 66 interface, it's
doubtful that bumping the theoretical transfer rate from Ultra 66 to 100 and
now to 133 will make much of a difference in throughput.

IDE drives keep getting faster, but the next quantum leap in HD performance
may come as a result of the new serial interface.


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