Abit RAID question....

[JerryH]

Ok, for the time being, I am using my older Maxtor drives on my KT7 RAID. The drives were originally used with a FastTrak/33. All I did was back up my old information, the reconnect the drives on the Abit and setup a raid. Used Fdisk and Format to prep a new striped RAID. Was this enough? I read somewhere once about doing a low-level format to completely wipe any old data from the hard drives, but I wonder it this is a needed step.

Eventually, I'll switch to some newer drives, but hafta need to wait for a green light from "she who controls the wallet" (wife!)

[xortam]

You don't need to do a low level format but you do have to establish your array and sripe size before partitioning the array and formatting the volumes.

[JerryH]

Yes, I did those things already, but perhaps that's where a problem I'm having lies: what is considered a good block size? I think it offers 4k, 8k, 16k, 32k and 64k. What are the trade-offs using a smaller block size vs. a larger one?

[cjolley]

Supposedly it goes by what kind of files you work with:
small stripes for small files -> large stripes for large files.

I have run mine at 16, 32, & 64 and can't tell a subjective difference.

Right now I have it set at 32.

chuck


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ABit BE6-2 V2, P3-650@923, 256mb@142cas3, 90gig (2x45) IBM 75GXP striped raid array, SB Live Value@3.0, Pioneer 104s DVD, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Acatel 1000 ADSL@1.5mb/sec, Linksys EtherFast NIC, LG 995e, USB mouse,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!

[xortam]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">small stripes for small files -> large stripes for large files</font>

Generally, that's right. Check out these threads:

WooWhoo!! 90 Gig striped array! Settings sugestions?

To RAID or not to RAID? ... notice my post towards the end which includes a quote from the Mylex web site.

Its good to separate your OS files from your streaming content if you have the luxury of establishing two arrays with their own stripe sizes.