Raid config ?

Hi all..When I set up my two sata hard drives in a raid 0 config I chose a
block size of 128k. I recently read somewhere that I would get better
performance if the stripe size would be set between 16k and 64k.

What are your thoughts and is it too late to change it without wiping out
info store on the drives?

If I can make a change is it done in the enter initial config utility prompt
that appears when pc boots?

Thanks..

DC

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 03:40:55 GMT, "David Ciemny"
wrote:

Hi all..When I set up my two sata hard drives in a raid 0 config I chose a
block size of 128k. I recently read somewhere that I would get better
performance if the stripe size would be set between 16k and 64k.

What are your thoughts and is it too late to change it without wiping out
info store on the drives?

Yes, for most purposes smaller stipes like 16-32K are better. It is too
late to change that now, you will be "wiping out" the data, there is no
way around that.


If I can make a change is it done in the enter initial config utility prompt
that appears when pc boots?

Yes that's where you change it, but you MUST back up the data first and
restore it afterwards.

kony...am I not getting the maximum out of my 2 drives since I have it set
to 128? Is there that much of a performance difference?

Dave
"kony" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 03:40:55 GMT, "David Ciemny"
wrote:

Hi all..When I set up my two sata hard drives in a raid 0 config I chose
a
block size of 128k. I recently read somewhere that I would get better
performance if the stripe size would be set between 16k and 64k.

What are your thoughts and is it too late to change it without wiping out
info store on the drives?

Yes, for most purposes smaller stipes like 16-32K are better. It is too
late to change that now, you will be "wiping out" the data, there is no
way around that.


If I can make a change is it done in the enter initial config utility
prompt
that appears when pc boots?

Yes that's where you change it, but you MUST back up the data first and
restore it afterwards.

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:36:14 GMT, "David Ciemny"
wrote:

kony...am I not getting the maximum out of my 2 drives since I have it set
to 128? Is there that much of a performance difference?


Much, no, but some particularly with smaller files, like running the OS,
usually less than 5%. The 128K size is a compromise... If you're working
with large files you might want an even larger large stripe size, and it
can vary based on the controller. Since you do seem interested in
maximizing performance you ought to do some Google searches for RAID
benchmarks of applications using same or similar filesizes to your most
demanding use, with the same controller you have. I do not recall which
controllers seem best with particular stripe sizes and you didn't mention
which you have.

Another alternative might be to just benchmark your array and see if
you're getting scores similar to others with same drives.