optimum RAID0 stripsize

[DrPara]

given system :
amd thunderbird 1100 mhz
256 mb ram
geforce2 gts64
epox 8kta3+(Highpoint) -latest bios,4in1 drv v4.31
20 gb quantum 5400 udma66 + 15 gb ibm 5400 udma66 + 40 gb quantum 4400 udma100
win2000 professional + win98 se + linux mandrake 8

(the quantum 40gb it is on a trial,its from a friend and i think i'll buy it-if it will speed up the raid 😉 )

i want to install a raid 0 with those 3 hdd and i'm not sure what stripsize is the best; i was thinking at a 16kb or 64 kb

what do u think ?
will the 40gb quantum 4400 slow down my raid ?

 

[dkozloski]

If you handle a mixed data content the stripe size is of little consequence. Most of the sources I have come across say that a 32K stripe is a pretty good compromise and it seems to work for me.

 

[Ben]

I always get better results with the larger 64Kb stripe.

 

[DrPara]

i did some tests with sisoft sandra here are the results :

disk: quantum 20 gb udma66 5400 ibm 15 gb udma66 5400
10583(bypass windows cache) 8748(bypass windows cache)
buffered read : 44 MB/s 50 MB/s
sequential read : 14 MB/s 12 MB/s
random read : 5 MB/s 4 MB/s
buffered write : 26 MB/s 34 MB/s
sequential write : 14 MB/s 11 MB/s
random write : 5 MB/s 3.901 MB/s
average access time : ~9 ms ~10 ms

 

[cchan]

Check out this RAID article:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491&p=1

It even lists out test done on stripe size for different IDE RAID controllers

 

[cbuchach]

Linkified to Anand's Awesome RAID Article!!

 

[rommel]

mine is 64k and i got really good sandra scores...but i forgot what ehthey were...lol...but it hink i read in the looooooong article that anand did on raid that 64 was a good stripe size

 

[Jiggz]

In AT's article. The optimum stripe size for a RAID 0 setup was not constant depending on the make of the RAID Controller. Although, 64 was common to more than one RAID controller there were times the 128 and 32 were the optimum on other boards.

 

[Mday]

the general consensus for GENERAL optimization is 64.

by general, i don't ONLY refer to the anandtech article.

 

[DrPara]

well,i've read the article from anandtech before posting here
the thing is that in the tests there were 2 identicall hdd
i dont have that ...remember ?
i think i'll run sisoft sandra for different stripping sizes and choose the best
it will take very much time... 🙁