How do I find out Hard Disk Cache/Buffer Size?

[nebulus]

Hi people, been a while since I posted here, since had my forum name changed to nebulus. Anyway, to the question...

I bought a hard disk from someone on ebay and it is supposed to have an 8mb buffer. One of the main reasons I made the buy was on the assurance that it was this version of the drive. I now have the drive installed and have ghosted over my old disk image and am using it to type this post.
I would now like to check the cache size to make sure I have got what I paid for, but I tried SiSoft Sandra and a few other methods and cannot find the info out. Can you recommend any utils or methods that may give me the nfo?

Thanks for reading

 

[young&wild]

What's the brand of you HDD? Most manufacturers assign their model numbers according to the specification of the HDD. In the case of Western Digital, WD800JB, where WD is WesternDigital and 800 shows that the disk contains 80.0GB and JB refers to the cache memory which is 8MB in this case and BB referst to 2MB of Cache memory.

 

[nebulus]

Managed to find out

Thanks for the tip Y&W, I have however managed to find an application that can tell you the info. It's pretty cool, its called Aida32, and can provide some quite detailed spec info.

Turns out that I have in fact been sold a drive with 2mb buffer instead of the 8mb advertised on the seller page at ebay
I am currently pursuing this dude as he has already left me positive feedback, so at least I can threaten him with negative feedback in return if he doesnt give me a replacement.

Thanks for your help anyway, seems the dodgy dealers of ebay strike once again :blackeye:

 

[conradguerrero]

in addition to that, u could also leave complaints with the better business bureau or www.paypal.com if u paid him through paypal, also if the value was over a certain amount, u can file a fraud report through ebay.

 

[nebulus]

Luckily this guy was co-operative and friendly when I contacted him. He told me that it was a genuine mistake on his part and that he had sent me the wrong version of the drive. He assured me that his record of feedback on ebay was 100% positive (which it was), and offered me the choice of full refund or a discount on the original price. Funnily enough he didn't offer me an 8mb buffered version of the drive, which I find a little dubious as a quick look through his history shows that he sells alot of these 'supposedly' 8mb buffered drives.
I asked him what sort of a discount he would offer and am awaiting reply. Maybe I'll keep this 2mb drive if he makes me a good offer.

Would the performance difference between a 2 and 8mb cache be that noticable anyway? I only initially fancied the 8mb buffer for paging purposes in games as I currently only have 256mb DDR Ram.

Anyway I'll let you know what decision I take when he gets back to me.

Thanks also for the tips conradguerrero

 

[MrGaribaldi]

You won't see too much difference between 8mb and 2mb, unless you're running a database (or suchlike) on it...

Games, videos and music do get a tiny bit of difference, but not a whole lot...

Search the board for a comparison done by one of our members (sorry, can't remember which)...

 

[Rick]

What's the model number on the drive?

For example, if it is Western Digital, ########JB designates 8mb, while #####AB designates 5400RPM, 2GB models and so on.

You can look up the model number online on almost any search engine like google.com or the manufacturer's website.

There also exist utilties for these types of things, although I don't know any off hand that give that specific information.

 

[nebulus]

I have sent this drive back to the guy in return for an agreed full fefund.

Rick, fyi I had a look at the drive before I sent it back. I found several codes on the drive each above a barcode. They were in this order:

1. yar41bwo

2. y2n8k18e

3. 6y08010422011

These are the only thing on the drive that resemble anything like a model number.
Btw, its a maxtor diamondmax plus 9, and I have used a utility (see one of the previous posts) to assatain the buffer, which I found to be 2mb.

When I get my refund I'm going to buy the 8mb cache version from a decent retailer, as that is what I initially desired.
Guess I can learn only one lesson from this, not to buy hardware from folks on ebay :dead: