I will be buing new hardrive for about $100 which can get me at nice IBM 80GB 7200rpm 2Mb buffer and 8.5ms seektime.Can someone explan me about seektime and the buffer? It obvious that 7200rpm is faster than 5000rpm, but how about the buffer and seektime?For example, which hardisk will be better?7200rpm, 8.5ms, and 2Mb bufferor7200rpm, 8.9ms, and 8Mb bufferThe slower seektime one has more buffer so I wonder if shoudl I choose one with more buffer or with faster skeetime.Please give me advice and some info on relations seektime and buffer.Is there advantage of having more buffer and choosing slower seektime one?Thanks in advance.

Hi. A word of caution on IBM. There are two kinds out there. The old has had problems, make sure you get new model, if you get it. As to the access time vs buffer, I would opt for the 8Mb. The 8.5-8.9 is an average and is less significant in most apps. You can gain more performance if you defrag your drive, and play some games with location of your OS and most used apps. You may want to look at other brands, WD, Maxtor. I had some bad luck with Quantum, now under Maxtor control. TV

Thanks for useful info. :)I have been using 20GB 7200rpm Maxtor for 2 years with no problems so if I find good deal Im gonna go with Maxtor.

Georgi,I think the most important factor in deciding on a hard drive for something like FS, which often involves heavy disk access, is SUSTAINED throughput. How fast can the drive move data, for a period of time long enough to move the required data into memory. You will typically see burst transfer rates quoted because the numbers are higher than sustained rates, but keep in mind that anything over a fraction of a second is sustained as far as the drive is concerned.Don't get too excited about the spindle RPM; this really only affects something called latency - how long it takes for the required data to move under the drive head. This is a very small factor in the overhead involved in the drive reading data.I suspect the drive with the 8Mb buffer is the one you want, but you might want to hit IBM's web site and have a look at the specs in detail.Doug Dawson