What block size should I use for two 75GXP 30GB in RAID 0?

[halfjag]

Using two IBM 75GXP 30GB drives on a KT7-RAID RAID-0 stripe set. What block size should I use? Also, I've seen some talk of using a "z" parameter on the format command. Think I read somewhere that the "z" parameter should always be double the block size? What's that all about?

I mostly play games with the system but occasionaly (well, okay, rarely) do some real work...programming and databases.
Thanks!

 

[MasterMind]

8K or 16K. 32 and up is better for large files.

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

Use 64... Aces had a SCSI controller test that proved that 128 was the best, but i think in software (for IDE) it would be best at 64.

 

[MasterMind]

I get better benchmarks with 128K but I'm running a 32K stripe since I game more than I capture video. I think its the best trade off of faster reads for gaming and still plenty fast for writing.

 

[Freeze]

sorry to take away from your thread....

how about if you were to stripe 2 20.5GB ATA66 7200 RPM drives. what type of performance increase could you expect? I am planning on building a 2nd system with this board and I am toying around with the idea of RAID... Thanks.

 

[halfjag]

Yeah, I'm leaning toward 32 or 64...but what about the "z" option on the format command. Any idea what that's about? The all informative help screen from the DOS prompt doesn't mention it.

thanks all.

 

[Cougar]

halfjag...

The -z switch is so that you can set the cluster size to whatever you want it to be. I read about it a few years ago so I can't remember what exactly the numbers were. I believe you had 3 or four choices in the values you could assign. It either went 0, 1, 2 or 1, 2, 3.....since everything in computers seems to start with 0 I'm assuming that it went 0, 1, 2. I think the higher the number the higher the cluster size and the lower the number the lower the cluster size. My friend was using it once and I think he could set the size to be anywhere from 512b to 4kb.

Since it has been a couple years since I saw it used I'm not going to say that I'm 100% correct, but that is the way that I remember it.

Hope that helps.

[Edit]
Forgot to mention that the -z switch was for fat32 only as I remember it so that's why you wouldn't find any information about it in dos help.