Cache Size Means?

I just won a bid on a harddrive that is pretty decent but its cache is 2MB. Most other harddrives are 8MB. What do these mean, and does it really matter? Speed improvements, better performance? What is cache and what does it do according to the amount you have?

its like a buffer.

its prabally a nicer, but older drive. 2mb used to be normal, now 8mb is normal, and 16 is good.

*nods* But nothing's wrong with 2M cache drives. They still perform just fine, just not quite as fast at the later...

So it would not go far as to processing things slower making programs slower as well right?

accessing things on the hard drive would be slower, as well as writing and deleting things to/from the drive. accessing probably wouldn't be a very noticeable difference compared to a 8mb (though i presume it depends on how large a file you are accessing), and things like saving a document wouldn't be noticeably affected.

couldnt have put it better myself

i think this depends on the cluster size

i dont really know how the buffer will affect the speed according to the file size

of course it will affect speed but with respect to other stuff ...

correct me if i'm wrong please