okay techies

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

here is the question for you this week.

RAID 5, BEST STRIPE SIZE FOR LARGE FILES?
as usual, i'm reading a hell of a bunch of material on this. nothing quite fits what i'm doing however, as is usually the case.
the RAID 5 array will mainly be used for storing very large files, average size i would say would probably be over 500meg per file.

currently i'm leaning to the 128k - 256k - 512k - 1024k stripe size, although will consider, 64k is also in the running, but i'm thinking that's a bit small for this application.

any of you geeks out there have an opinion?

valis

Comments

[ozdeadmeat.livejournal.com]

The bigger the block size the more "wasted" space but the better performance.

eg. If you have a file that is 1350k and ur block size is set to 1024, the file will take up 2048k. Big files like bigger sector sizes. If the files on the hard drive are going to all be over 500mb id set it to the largest block size possible.

I think it reduces seek time or something. I cant be sure without actually looking it up.

So in my opinion if the files are that large and there all that large set the block size to something like 1024k atleast. If you can set it higher then i would recomend that. The larger the block size the more "wasted" space your hard drive will have. Especially for small files. Anyway, good luck with your decision.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

yeah, i'm leaning towards the 512 or 1024 right now, thanks!

the key is in the writing, if i set a 16k stripe, a 500 meg file has to be broken up into 32000 pieces to be written, a 512k stripe lowers that num to 1000

[zig-mover.livejournal.com]

Largest possible.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

sweeet, that's where i'm leaning

Well...

[kingginger.livejournal.com]

I've just been on my MS Exchange 2003 course (2400) and they said use the largest size stripe or format on the disc.

Laterz

Re: Well...

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

many thanks!

[snoopyh42.livejournal.com]

Where's that icon from?

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

http://www.valiskeogh.com/15.swf

:)