Which would be better for me, getting a 160Gb Hdd with 2Mb of cache, or a 120Gb Hdd with 8Mb of cache?

I'm not really sure if I need 8Mb of cache in my drive -- I mainly use my Linux box for editing pictures with the GIMP and listening to OGGs.

120 with 8mb ... A bigger cache is worth it, you would notice a difference

I would also favor the 120 w/8Mg cache, but another consideration is cost, and a third would be how much disk space you expect you will need over the next year or two. In other words, if you currently are only using, let's say, 30G of space, then even if you tripled that, you'd still have either 30G free (on the 120) or 70G free (on the 160). Personally I don't see that there is that much advantage to having giant disk drives if you simply will never use anywhere close to the max capacity. Just my 2 cents -- J.W.

I'd go with the 160gig drive with 2mb cache. I've never noticed any performance difference with cache size with a modern OS. For listening to music, there is really no difference whatsoever!

With the GIMP, the primary consideration for improving performance is to ensure that the hard drive is used as little as possible. This means RAM, RAM, and more RAM. Hard drive cache size has virtually no effect whatsoever. If the GIMP is going to be hitting the hard drive, it's going to be hitting it for a LOT more than 8megabytes at a time.

Actually the price of the two drives are the same, that's why I'm at a loss as to which one to buy...

But guess what, when roaming around for about half an hour around computer shops, I found a 160Gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 with 8Mb cache at a price that was about US$4 more than a 160Gb Seagate Barracuda with 2Mb cache. I went for it right away.

Thanks for the feedback!

The large cache (8 megabytes) tends to be better for database environments or loading up a program by accessing several files. You will not see an improvement when using a hard drive with 8 megabytes of cache for audio listening or editing files. I suggest getting the 160 GB hard drive because images can be large depending what DPI you scan the images at.

BTW, do not buy Maxtor and Seagate drives because they use more processor usage than IBM/Hitachi and Western Digital.