Help: DFI nf3 250GB RAID 0 info needed

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4PLaY

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
Messages
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with the specs on my sig, I want to setup RAID 0 on 2 wd800jd 80gb SATA drives

using sata 3,4.
I got thru the endless reboot problem known to occur with nV chipsets on DFI Lanparty boards, and now successfully installed WinXP sp2 with the slipstreamed nvRAID whql drivers. with the help of a dfi-street member fernando and his nLite guide.

now the only thing nagging me now is this: there were only a few choices in the stripe size drop down in the RAID setup console, and the largest was 128kb, I want to make 512kb stripes to compromise performance since I'll be using the array as a mixed drive partitioned in 3 parts and will contain everything from OS, Gamez, Music, Progz/Appz, Vidz. It's basically an all around array, so I'd ideally choose 512kb, I couldn't find any way to do it.

Questions:

1. What is that "Optimal" stripe size in the drop down in the RAID setup console?
2. Is there a way for me to set 512kB stripe size or even larger?
3. The RAID bios I have is 4.52, is there a way to update this?
4. Can I defrag a RAID 0 Array. I want to use perfect disk.

Any help appreciated. thanks. :p
 
4PLaY said:
1. What is that "Optimal" stripe size in the drop down in the RAID setup console?
2. Is there a way for me to set 512kB stripe size or even larger?
3. The RAID bios I have is 4.52, is there a way to update this?
4. Can I defrag a RAID 0 Array. I want to use perfect disk.
Click to expand...

1. If i remember right i have mine set at 64kb
2. I doubt that it supports that and the benifits of that only show if ever single file on the hard drive is big
3. The raid bios updates with the motherboard bios
4. Defragging a RAID 0 array is just like any other hard drive

I'm still not sure why you want to set the stipe size to 512kb to compromise performance. Even if it is partitioned you'll get faster performance from a much smalled stripe size. I would go with a 64kb stripe size it seems to offer the best performance for an os drive.
 
:) thanks underdone that was quick.

anyway, Yeah I originally wanted a 1024kb stripe because the same array will also contain videos up to 500mb each but on a different partition, so as a compromise for the windows OS files I decided to get 512kb but couldn't do it coz the drop downs only go as far as 128, and then there is a choice for "Optimal"

to illustrate clearly what I meant about the optimal thing.

the choices I have for stripe sizes are the following
4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and "Optimal"

there is no option to manually input a stripe size
so I think my question is, what is that "Optimal" choice. :)
 
Oh, and just to add to my adventures, I just noticed that my temps on the CPU are ridiculously high when playing a game called RAN online. I used to just skim above 49-50.

Is RAID known for stressing CPU more??
 
I have the same board, don't know what optimal is for, I have mine at 64k and it does very well. I read a while back if you set the strip to0 small it hurts performance on large files, but if you set the stripe too large in hurts performance on small size files.... I set mine at 64 which seems to be a good balance.

I am no expert and have only had raid 0 on two PCs.
 
"Optimal" is 64K (you can check this by setting it, and then re-checking setting in the raid manager), and that so because Windows tends to write in 64K blocks.
 
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