hard drive buffer size

[sparky472]

I've been considering buying a large hard drive for storing music files. I'd like to put all of my CDs on a hard drive so I can run a cable from my sound card to my stereo (maybe one day buy a DAR, when I can afford it) and play them from the PC rather than the CD player.

At any rate, I noticed CompUSA is having a sale on a Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM drive. The buffer size is 2MB. I've seen other large capacity drives with bigger buffers. I'm wondering how much a factor this should be and what affect it might have on performance.

I suspect it should be fine, as the 20GB Maxtor I have right now certainly doesn't have a cache larger than 2MB. For all I know it's smaller.

I don't plan on running an OS or any programs from it. It would be strictly for storage of music files. Any thoughts?

Thanks

[Platypus]

For storage applications the 2M buffer will be fine. For many other applications too. The bigger buffer is nice, and in some cases could give a worthwhile performance boost, but in many situations you wouldn't notice a great difference.

[Shinma]

Ditto to 2MB cache for storage purposes...

[sparky472]

Thanks gang. I got it (120GB for $80) and loading it up with music. Works fine.