best NTFS cluster size for capturing

[landrover]

I did a search on cluster sizes but the returns were too dated to meet my objectives.
I´m about to re-format my RAID O array and am wondering if there´s a guideline as to what is the best clustersize on NTFS-formatted drives performance-wise. With the RAID array being about 150 GB large, I am not too concerned about clusterspace waste.

landrover

[SpiralDragon]

great question... i would like to know the answer to this one too

[Brian Ellis]

Cluster size for video should always be as large as your OS/hardware will permit. If you change it, it is recommended to do so on an empty partition. Partition Magic is a good utility for managing your partitions.

[Marshmallowman]

I vaguely recall 64k being the sweet spot for a lot of cards in RAID 0?

You could have a look at storagereview.com they have some good info

[Ray Austin]

Yeah I agree with Marshmellowman, I had one set up way back in 2000 with the RT2000 and 64k was the best setting.

But if you are just capturing DV, you really don't need Raid these days. Hard drives these days can easily capture the DV rate of 3.5MB/s.

Only if you are capturing uncompressed would you really need a Raid in my opinion.

You can also do a search at tomshardware.com with "Raid" being the topic you're sure to find many articles about it.

[landrover]

No, as you can see I´m the hopelessly old-fashioned kind of guy:
I DON´T capture DV, I capture analog using a variety of codecs but mainly HuffYUV for high quality captures. I´ll see if the systems gives (even) better performance on 64K clustersize.

landrover

[mits]

Landrover,
i have also formatted my raid-0 using 64k clustersize, but i can't tell the diffrence since i have never used a smaller cluster size.

[Marshmallowman]

As I recall larger than 64k may give you (very) slightly better performance for captureing and moving larger files, but at quite a large cost in perfomance of normal file activity on smaller files.

Like I said 64k is a "sweet" spot, 99% of the best capture performance but no sacraficing other stuff.

[Eddy]

You could have problems running defrag when you have a cluster size greater than 4K. I've read somewhere that the API that is used to relocate files on an NTFS filesystem does not support large cluster sizes. If the filesystem is only used for capturing, defragmenting it is probably not necessary, so it is probably not a real problem.

Eddy.

[Brian Ellis]

I don't defrag my RAID array (120 Gb), but I fully reformat it at the start of each new project. Faster!!!

[SpiralDragon]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
I don't defrag my RAID array (120 Gb), but I fully reformat it at the start of each new project. Faster!!!

i do the same except on some ocations where i defnetly need to defrag and have too many projects that i cant move around or deleat....

[landrover]

Yesterday I reformatted the RAID 0 array to 64K clustersize. No experiences yet concerning performance but I would like to note that I had to use WinXP´s formatting and partitioning tool because Partition Magic (version 7) returned a "Partition currently in use" error and above that, the cluster resize option in PM was greyed out. By the way, the former clustersize on the Array was 4K (default?), so I´m definately expecting improvement here.
Brian, when you re-format, do you apply quick-format or regular?

landrover