RAID questions

[Atvar]

I am trying to figure out the best RAID level to go with. Specifically for laying out dvds. I have been using RAID level 3 but now I am reading that it doesn't do so well with writing multiple files at once. Would 5 be a better choice for this? Also, with regard to striping since I am moving a large amount of data I would want to go with a larger stripe width correct? am thinking 64 but I don't know if this is too large or not.

 

[Vegito]

what controller do you have ? on board or pci controller.. and what size cache do you have on the controller ?

raid 5 is good because it offers protection but if you do 5 w/o a hardware controller, you're just asking for trouble, it'll be slower.. raid 1 is good also but it doesn't offer speed increase..

there might not be any speed increase at all..

 

[Atvar]

sorry, forgot to list system stats. Its a pci scsi controller on an sgi tezro running IRIX. I don't know the cache size on the card but its ultra 160.