Question What should I look for in HDD cache?

[Archon of the Valley]

Hi, I'm planning to buy a new hard drive that will probably end up being the boot drive for a fresh, dual-boot install of Windows 7 and 10. I know I want a 7200rpm drive but I'm not entirely sure what the best cache size would be. This is a gaming rig but I also do work and other things with it. I also typically run a browser concurrently with my games.

Ideally, I want to get the best performance and best load times but I'm not 100% sure what the best cache size would be for such a PC. I'm known as the "Lord of Load Screens" among my friends since I always load in way after everyone else so I'd like to change that with my next drive.

Also, at the moment, an SSD is not an option for me as my funds are very limited right now. Just getting a standard, 2TB hard drive is gonna put me back a little ways, so an SSD would be much worse.

I appreciate any advice and opinions given!

 

[Grobe]

Greater cache would not increase loading performance noticeably.

If you're stuck at HDD because of founds, you should rather make sure to have a partition at the beginning of the disk, where the r/w performance is better, and then you install the games on that partition.

 

[fzabkar]

Be careful, as larger caches are often a sign that the drive is an SMR model.

 

[popatim]

WD Blacks between 1tb and 6tb (inclusive) are not the dreaded SMR drives.
Seagate IronWolf and IronWolf Pro are SMR free.
Many Hitachi drives are not SMR as I understand it.

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/list-of-known-smr-drives.141/

 

[USAFRet]

Ideally, I want to get the best performance and best load times but I'm not 100% sure what the best cache size would be for such a PC. I'm known as the "Lord of Load Screens" among my friends since I always load in way after everyone else so I'd like to change that with my next drive.

A different spinning drive won't change that level load time in any significant way.

 

[geofelt]

Consider the option of deferring on the hard drive and buying a ssd instead.
The cost will be comparable.
A 240gb ssd can hold windows and a fair number of games and be a much better windows C drive.
You can always add a hard drive later.

 

[Archon of the Valley]

So I shouldn't worry too much about cache size, then, and just make sure it's not an SMR drive?

Consider the option of deferring on the hard drive and buying a ssd instead.
The cost will be comparable.
A 240gb ssd can hold windows and a fair number of games and be a much better windows C drive.
You can always add a hard drive later.

I'm afraid I can't afford an SSD at this time. I play loads of games so I'd need at least a 1TB SSD and those can be $110 and up, which is just something I can't afford right now. It's the main reason why I'll probably have to resort to leaving my copy of Windows 10 unactivated for a while when I get my new drive.