External 320gb HDD - Lacie or Maxtor? It's all about cache.

[garnett]

So I want to buy some more storage, but I want to know whether to go for porsche looks and 8mb of cache, or fairly unappealing looks and 16 whole mb of cache.

Will I notice the difference in cache size, because would sure-as-**** rather stare at the Lacie all day, rather than the maxtor...

Cheers for any help anyone can offer...

[Taxation]

cache is basically where any program that you have used recently sits, when it isnt in the RAM that is.
seeeing that it is external, i would get the better looking one, cache size isnt my thing :D
there might be a slight difference in performance, but 8mb cache will do fine

[garnett]

Thanks Taxation.

I've been looking at the western digital drive. This has a auto-on-off feature. The Maxtor and the Lacie don't appear to have on/off switches at all. Does anyone know how these work?

Do they stay on all the time? If so does this shorten their life expectancy?

[Taxation]

they probably turn off when not in use, eg. when the computer is powered down