Block size for Raid0?

[Crunch]

I currently have 2x74 gig raptor's in raid0 @ 16k block size, in the past i had always used 64k for my raid0 but a friend told me that i should use 16k size for my gaming rig, what is the best block size for a gaming rig? i mean this pc is straight gaming, nothing else.

thanks for your replys

 

[sylvez]

if u're using a software raid controller (CPU doing the raid job) then u would like to know that the smaller the block size the more CPU cycles u take to achieve (transfer) the same amount of data

however a smaller block size is definitely faster than a larger block (in terms of transferring data from hdd to ram)

if the game requires large movement of data from hdd to ram then u would like a smaller block size

if game is CPU intensive then a larger block size might be better

then again nowadays CPU is so fast that it doesnt really matter anymore (at least from my perspective)

do with smaller block size.

also, note that smaller block size = more read/write actions on the HDD heads. therefore wearing ur hdd out even faster

 

[RichPLS]

Smaller files do not really need to be split, since it can slap them on disk so fast anyway. I am using 64k on my 2 74gig Raptors. I get 110MB sustained transfers and 7.5ms avg seek times.
In games the benifit is mainly on boot times, and large blocks are loaded, during gameplay, RAID does not help much anyway.

2 years ago I used 16k on my Abit AthlonXP board, and it actually hurt transfer speed compared to 64k.

 

[Crunch]

thanks for the replys, im going to do a full rebuilt/format of my raid when i get my new x1900xtx and i think im going back to 64k.

thanks again