Western Digital drives with 8Mb cache… Are they better?
Yes. Although there seems to be much heated debate on exactly how the performance gains are achieved. The increase of the onboard cache size FROM 2mb to 8mb seems to aid the efficiency of the read/write process, especially when dealing with lots of small read/write requests/files. Drive firmware optimizations also play a signifigant role. Of course to get a drive with 8Mb cache you must pay a premium. Additionally, since the start of October the drives FROM W.D. with 8Mb cache retain the 3 year guarantee, with Seagate and Maxtor planning on following suite with their 8Mb cache offerings.
