Computer Hardware Terms, Glossary and Dictionary

A disk cache is a mechanism for improving the time it takes to read from or write to a hard disk. The disk cache can be part of RAM (sometimes called a soft disk cache) or part of the hard disk(sometimes called a hard disk cache or buffer). The disk cache holds data that has recently been read and, in some cases, adjacent data areas that are likely to be accessed next. Write caching is also provided with some disk caches. Hard disk caches are more effective, but they are also much more expensive, and therefore smaller.

Related Terms

disk cache