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back to article Buffalo herds DDR3 RAMs into DriveStation's spinning rust corrals

Storage hardware maker Buffalo has given its latest drives a hefty DDR3 RAM cache boost, putting them on par with flash memory's data access times, they claim. The 2TB and 3TB DriveStation DDR models utilise a USB 3.0 interface. Buffalo says read speeds are up past 330MB/sec, with write speeds topping 400MB/sec. So 800MB of …

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  1. Sureo
    Meh

    The article doesn't say how much DDR3 memory the drive has. In any case once it fills up, won't writes revert to hard drive speed?

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    1. Steven Raith
      Reply Icon

      A quick google suggests..

      A gig of DDR3 according to Buffallos website.

      To be fair, for most stuff, that's well more than enough and would probably do no harm with small file transfers (assuming the host OS can keep up) but it'd be interesting to see how it copes with a 3gb file transfer.

      I tend to bang a few hundred meg of photos over to a backup drive at a time - that'd suit me fine, assuming of course the drive has a DRAM battery somewhere...

      Steven R

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    2. Steven Raith
      Reply Icon

      Also...

      Software lets you create a RAM drive with it - handy for editing photos/videos surely?

      Surprised that's not in the article TBH, an easy way to make a RAM drive is something that's interesting from a consumer product.

      Steven R

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      1. Aitor 1
        Reply Icon

        Re: Also...

        Of course not. It is a cache.

        I would prefer to be able to assign HDD cache in the OS, and having that additional GB in main memory...

        As it is behind an USB3 interface, this solution would be slower, buy I could use the extra memory for other purposes.

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        1. Justin Stringfellow
          Reply Icon
          Facepalm

          Re: Also...

          You'd like to cripple your system by giving it 1GB of DDR-3 RAM (10GB/s+) connected by USB 3 (625MB/s)?

          Stay away from my kit, cowboy.

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      2. phuzz Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Trollface

        Re: Also...

        You want an easy way to create a RAM drive? Just boot off your Workbench disk and there's one there on the desktop.

        Oh, you mean for an OS from the last decade, erm, google it?

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  2. annodomini2

    So when do I get my Gig of cache on a conventional hdd?

    see above

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    RAM caches do work.

    A RAM cache is a nice thing to have, they can work very very well. It isn't ever going to drive the RAM flat out over USB3, but it will be faster than the disk alone. It's not entirely pointless.

    I wonder what happens when you unplug it?

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  4. Chris Mellor 1

    Amount of DRAM cache

    1GB of DDR3 DRAM cache. That was left out - oops!

    Chris.

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