Abit NF7-S 2.0 RAID and stripe question

I

IronChefMorimoto

Limp Gawd
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Apr 14, 2002
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I was wondering if someone, going by the basic specs in my sig, could give me an idea of the ideal stripe size for WinXP on an Abit NF7-S 2.0 SATA RAID. I did the auto RAID 0 setup, and I was wondering if, with two Maxtor SATA 120GB DiamondMax 9 drives, I'd get better performance setting up the stripe size manually.

Thanks,
IronChefMorimoto
 
since the 3112 is software raid, mainly, it's going to be using your cpu for alot of the work. therefore, it works like this.
stripe size = 128. lowest cpu usage, lowest performance. also consumes a lot of extra space. for example, data is stored in 128k chunks, but if you have a file of 32k, it still uses 128k.
stripe size = 4. highest cpu usage, highest performance. best use of disk space.
personally, i find the best results at either 16 or 8 as the stripe size; i'm using 16 for mine.
 
I am just the opposite. I get better performance with larger stripe sizes. 64 is good, 128 is better. Look around for reviews. I seem to remember Anand did an IDE RAID controller roundup with Promise/Highpoint/3WARE awhile back, see if you can track it down. Across the board all of the controllers got better transfer rates with larger stripes.


EDIT: To prove I am not a completely lazy bastard: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491&p=24

I did not see any Highpoint controllers used in this test.
 
interesting. do note i'm using completely different RAID 0 algorithms - linux software raid (completely generic) verse closed source windows drivers published for their own RAID controllers.
 
16/16 stripe/cluster works best for me. You'll need a program like Partition Magic to do the cluster change.
 
Thanks for the info, fellas. I assume that, using the Silicon Images 3112A SATA RAID on the board, I'm using a hardware RAID in which those higher stripe sizes as mentioned in the Anandtech article would result in better performance. Right?

It's a moot point now. I used the automatic stripe setup in the RAID BIOS interface and will stick with it for the time being.

It sure is nice though having a hefty 228MB of high speed storage now. Definitely an upgrade from an ATA100 20GB hard drive. ;)

IronChefMorimoto
 
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