The buffer cache contains data buffers that are used by the block device drivers.
These buffers are of fixed sizes (for example 512 bytes) and contain blocks of information that have either been read from a block device or are being written to it. A block device is one that can only be accessed by reading and writing fixed sized blocks of data. All hard disks are block devices.
The buffer cache is indexed via the device identifier and the desired block number and is used to quickly find a block of data. Block devices are only ever accessed via the buffer cache. If data can be found in the buffer cache then it does not need to be read from the physical block device, for example a hard disk, and access to it is much faster.