Optimal Raid 0 array

[Vag The Duke]

I have an ASUS A7V333 motherboard with built in raid, and the only options I get when configuring the raid0 array is: server,desktop or A/V Editing.

1. Does anybody know what the stripesizes is for the above options?

2. Does it matter what clustersize you're using when formatting the disks after I've created the raid0 array regarding to performance?

[Jake]

1. The A7V333 uses the "light" version of the RAID chip by promise. It does not support stripesizes other than 64 blocks. I have no idea what those three options refer to.

2. The larger the clustersize the greater the sequential read speed, but small files will take up larger amounts of disk space as a cluster is the smallest disk-unit. Ie. a 4kb file on a disk with 64Kb cluster size take up 64Kb efectively. That why adding up available disk space an total file size never equals total disk space. I am running on the A7V333 two 40 GB IBM GXP60 disks set up with a 32 Gb primary partition (max FAT32 partition) and the rest as an extended partition (45 GB) formatted in NTFS. You could choose a smaller primary partition and allocate more to the NTFS partition if you like, but it's a tradoff between access speed (FAT32 is faster) and selectable cluster size (NTFS). As you might know the cluster size is fixed on FAT32 partitions (can be overridden manually, but I don't recommend it) and scales with partition size from 4KB up to 64Kb clusters.

But more importantly, find out if you need fault tolerance on your primary volume (windows drive). If you don't I would go for the FAT32 partition as it is faster than NTFS. You can still format your data partitions in NTFS if you like.

Sorry about the long ramble.

/Jake

[Vag The Duke]

Hi Jake!

I forgot to tell you that I use NTFS and WinXP.
I think that these options have to do something with the stripesizes but because it's the light version I think that they have made the information "less advanced" for newbies.

[RichL]

I found this article when I was setting up RAID on my system. It refers to the HPT370 chip onboard an Abit KT7x, but I'm sure the principles are the same.

http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/installation.htm#winonraid

Hope this helps.

[Gurm]

Those options have NOTHING to do with stripe sizes and more to do with how the stripes are arranged - which is tres bizarre, if you ask me.

Modify your motherboard's BIOS to be full RAID. A good starting point:

http://www.stormpages.com/crazyape

- Gurm

[Dr Mordrid]

And for the record: very rarely is a stripe size above or below 64k worthwhile from the throughput standpoint, so having the "lite" version of the Promise chip is not as debilitating as it may sound.

Dr. Mordrid

[xortam]

Run a good application benchmark and test it for yourself. I used ZD Disk WinBench under differing stripe sizes and two versus three disk RAID 0 arrays. Interesting results. WinBench was nice because I could pick the applications that mattered to me and optimize towards them.

P.S. Too bad the forum search isn't activated. We talked about those options maybe a year ago and the manual did mention various stripe sizes but I don't know which MB it was. Check your manual but these guys are probably right (they do get it wrong on occasion ) that your MB can't alter the stripe size using the normal BIOS.

[Vag The Duke]

Then what is the purpose of the options ofesktop.Server,A/V Editing if they do not have any impact on the stripesizes?