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partition question and scsi raid 0 and cache usage question

P

pRS317

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 23, 2005
Messages
140
i figured i'd just organize the questions as they somtimes get lost when their in paragraph form:

1. i've read in a few posts about one of the downsides of raid being improper management or use of cache is that true?
2. if so, does that apply just to the cache on the hd or would it also be the case for the cache on the scsi raid card; or does the card optimize cache usage based on it's being used as a raid-0?
3. also, would it be better to use two drives on separate channels or does it not matter?

partition questions:

4. some number of years ago, i remember hearing that partitions hamper hd performance, is that still the case?
5. if so, does the number of partitions beyond two further decrease the performance?

thanks!
 
>>1. i've read in a few posts about one of the downsides of raid being improper management or use of cache is that true?
I've not heard that - I have always though RAID gave you better performance (apart from raid 1 which is mirroring so no performance gain). See http://www.acnc.com/raid.html for details.

>>2. if so, does that apply just to the cache on the hd or would it also be the case for the cache on the scsi raid card; or does the card optimize cache usage based on it's being used as a raid-0?
The cache on the HDD will just get "used". The controller cache might have to be flushed a lot due to server environment type useage (i.e. non-continuous seeks resulting from users grabbing any old data from a share). This might be what you mean. The way round this is to get lots of RAM on your RAID card (we have Dell perc 4s with 256Mb RAM on board on our servers)

>>3. also, would it be better to use two drives on separate channels or does it not matter?
If you are SATA or IDE raiding then maybe, for SCSI it is designed for RAID so no problem. This is more for home usage I take it?

partition questions:

>>4. some number of years ago, i remember hearing that partitions hamper hd performance, is that still the case?
Partitions per se wont, but having lots of read/write off of many partitions on the same disk will hurt the total through-put. For a home user it's a minimal effect (unless you really start to multi-task), but for a server with 20 people accessing data all the time a singe disk solution will suffer speed wise. Note that the HDD speed might not be a bottle neck though - it might be the wireless network speed or hubs instead of switches.

>>5. if so, does the number of partitions beyond two further decrease the performance?
No, number of read/writes will hurt performance (which makes sense if you think about it).
2 users accessing data from a raid RAID 5 setup with say 10 partitons is not going to have much of an effect but 10 users accessing 2 partitions will most likly have a speed reduction (asuming there are no other bottle necks).

So - to summerise - have as many partions as you need and if you want performance go RAID 5 with IDE/SATA for home use and SCSI for a business environment.

Hope that helps

L
 
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