Best Raid 0 stripe size

[Guest]

I setup the Raid 0 array to 32k at the beginning before install the Windows
XP. I divide the 2 hard drives (160 GB SATA) into 2 partitions C: and D:.
OS and all program files are stored in C drive. 1) Can I format the D drive
in 64K or 128k in Windows XP, or it has to be 32k? 2) I have some movie
editing, such as converting 200mb rmvb files to mpeg file which is about
1.4GB. What is the best stripe size in this case? Thanks

Wilson Chu

 

[frodo]

I setup the Raid 0 array to 32k at the beginning before install the Windows
XP. I divide the 2 hard drives (160 GB SATA) into 2 partitions C: and D:.
OS and all program files are stored in C drive. 1) Can I format the D drive
in 64K or 128k in Windows XP, or it has to be 32k? 2) I have some movie
editing, such as converting 200mb rmvb files to mpeg file which is about
1.4GB. What is the best stripe size in this case? Thanks

stripe size is for the whole drive-array, so you're stuck at 32K.
To change it you have to wipe the whole array and reset it, losing all
data on both drives.

optimum stripe for MOST applications would be 64K or 128K. 128K
deffinately if you do a lot of video editing. 32K is fine too, I don't
think reformatting and rebuilding would be worth the small increase in
performance at this point. In the future if you ever do a rebuild then
wipe and reinstall at 128K stripe size.

note that small stripe sizes work best with BENCHMARKING tools, but that
is misleading; these test-tools do not mimic real-world application access
patterns; they do random accesses of small segments, and give a good
indication of a HD + controller's raw performance capabilites, but a poor
indication of real-world SYSTEM performance. That's why most raid-0
controllers will default to a 128K stripe size.

 

[Guest]

Some expert also recommand to format the hard drive with cluster size match
the stripe size. Say if the stripe size is 64k, the cluster size should be
64k to increase the performance. Is it ture? When the Windows XP first
install and format the hard drive partition, the default cluster size is only
4k. It could be a more complex procesure to make the whole hard drive to
match cluster size and stripe size.

Wilson Chu

 

[frodo]

Some expert also recommand to format the hard drive with cluster size match
the stripe size. Say if the stripe size is 64k, the cluster size should be
64k to increase the performance. Is it ture? When the Windows XP first
install and format the hard drive partition, the default cluster size is only
4k. It could be a more complex procesure to make the whole hard drive to
match cluster size and stripe size.

I was going to mention that, but it's simply not true, so I left it out.

Don't waste time trying to match the two, it wont matter. Sounds logical,
but it just ain't so. If the raid controller was an integral part of the
NTFS system then it might matter, but the driver and the FS are unaware of
each other, to assume that matching the sizes makes a difference is just
folklore. By bumping the cluster size up to 64K you'd undoubtedly
decrease NTFS's efficency.