Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (
More info?)
semi_charm@yahoo.com wrote:
> Raptors are nice, but they have far too little space for the price. I
> guess I'll try to 8MB drives.
Tis true the price/capacity ratio on Raptors is a little on the poor side,
but they are blooming fast (real world fast as well not just on paper) I
guess it depends on where your priorities lie.
> What's the recommended strip size?
The optimum stripe size can vary depending on a number of factors.
This include average file sizes, drive format, drive performance and cache,
sector size etc.
I have heard (in relation to RAID 5 and 50) that a good starting point is to
take your average file size divide this by the number of drives in your
array minus one to allow for the parity drive. When calculating this for
RAID 50 you should only count the drives in one mirror.
But personally I don't hold with this theory as if for example you have a
handful of very large files and the rest are tiny then your average gets
pushed up too high and you end up with a stripe size that is so large that
small file performance is going to really suffer.
I'd say as a rule of thumb. If you are going to be dealing with mostly large
files then set the stripe size at >512KB. If you are going to be doing a
mix then somewhere in the 128-256KB seems reasonable and if you are dealing
with lots of tiny files then perhaps go lower.