RAID: Ideal Strip Size?

[Mootorks]

Hey All,

I'm about to buy the KR7A-Raid and want to create a raid 0 array with my two new 40GB Maxtor D740X's. I have never created a raid array before, but for the past few days I've been doing a fair amount of research on them.

The RAID array seems fairly easy to setup, however of all the guides I've looked at on the internet none seem to come to a consensus about an Ideal Strip Size. Anandtech's guide for instance suggests using a 64KB strip size for the Iwill SIDE Raid 100, which uses the Highpoint 370 controller, which is the step sister to the 372 controller found on the KR7A-Raid. In contrast, the Raid optimization guide found here suggests using a 16KB strip size. Although that article was based on the Promise 100 Fastrak controller.

Both articles hold merit, however it still leaves me at the crossroads. I've already decided I'm formatting using NTFS for Win XP Pro, but should I format using 16KB stripes or 64kb stripes? And why I'm asking, are there any other RAID issues I should be aware of in general? Any problems with RAID and the KR7A?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

-Mootorks

 

[John]

Use a smaller stripe if you work with smaller files. I always used a 32K stripe w/ NTFS.

 

[NelsonMuntz]

<< Use a smaller stripe if you work with smaller files. I always used a 32K stripe w/ NTFS. >>


Exactly! I think Anand found that with the files they worked with that the 64 kB stripe size was good, but if another test were running with a lot of smaller files, it would seem to favor the 16 kB stripe. Middle of the road might not be a bad idea at 32 kB. I would probably either go with the 32 kB or the 64 kB personally.

 

[cleverhandle]

Sorry, but that "Optimization" article was a POS. First of all, his calculation of RAID 0 MTBF was wrong in multiple ways, and his "hypotheses" were more like unfounded fantasies. But even so, he didn't really interpret anything or draw any conclusions. Anybody can simply rebuild the array, run WinBench, and post the results on a web page - how about explaining what you saw or telling readers how to adapt those results to their situation? Maybe a discussion of the benchmark you chose and its limitations? Utter crap.

As the other posters mentioned, a smaller stripe will be more beneficial if you work with smaller files. But if you work with smaller files, the RAID won't help you very much anyway, since so much time is spend by the drives just locating the files on the platters. The time savings for a modern drive in actually reading and transferring two halves of a sub-64k file compared to the single file in one piece is pretty inconsequential. Go with 32K at the lowest, probably 64K. Might as well get better performance on the big files you do work with, even if there aren't that many.

 

[Mootorks]

Hey Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely go with creating a 64kb strip size. I work alot with large image files, and I'm sure Raid would go a long way in helping the long loading times for some of my games like RTCW.

And thanks to cleverhandle for debunking the Raid optimization article I mentioned earlier. The funny thing is that I found the link to that article on these forums. Just goes to show you: question what you find on the internet.

Thanks again to all those who responded.

-Mootorks