Raid-0 Striped Size?

[askyrie]

I'm a RAID noob. I have 2 36G Seagate SCSI hard drives. I want to set up a RAID-0 for them. What should I be using for the Striped size? I think I saw 8kb- 64kb. I chose the largest cuz I think that is the best

 

[dewhite]

Alot of people go with 32k, but if you really wanna get what's best for you - install on every size and bench them all. Every setup is different, and the only way to know what's going to work best for you is to try them all.

 

[Zero1]

I use 32kb too, simply because it is supposed to be middle of the road. The smallest I can select is 16KB up to 2MB. The higher you go, the lower your sustained transfer gets, I saw a big drop at 64KB and higher. 16KB uses a lot of CPU usage for me also, so there was only 32KB left. It does a nice job of loading Windows at this size too

 

[Ice Czar]

Originally posted by dewhite
install on every size and bench them all.

with a stop watch and the aps you actually use
most "benchmarks" heavily favor smaller stripes for their scores

RAID Performance Issues \ Stripe Size

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Decreasing Stripe Size: As stripe size is decreased, files are broken into smaller and smaller pieces. This increases the number of drives that an average file will use to hold all the blocks containing the data of that file, theoretically increasing transfer performance, but decreasing positioning performance.

Increasing Stripe Size: Increasing the stripe size of the array does the opposite of decreasing it, of course. Fewer drives are required to store files of a given size, so transfer performance decreases. However, if the controller is optimized to allow it, the requirement for fewer drives allows the drives not needed for a particular access to be used for another one, improving positioning performance.
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