Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Reply to this thread

Forum question

Started by oAJAXo | | 4 answers
formatting for Marvell chip storage array.
Hi
I need to quick format a 60GB SSD to use as a storage array with a 3TB HDD linked via a Marvell chip on a Gigabyte Z87X UD4H mobo.

The idea is to store my games- Disk loaded, Steam/Origin/Arc etc. etc. on the HDD and utilise the speed from the SSD/Marvel chip.

My question is what to set the allocation unit size to on the quick format. What sort of footprint do games load when accessed. I assume the .exe file and running files are stored on the SSD as long as you use the same game/s files. Any ideas of this or how to find out?
Many thanks
AJAX
  • By posting on this site, I confirm I am over 13 years of age and agree to abide by the site’s rules.

April 22, 2014 2:18:16 AM

popatim said:
so you want to use the ssd as a cache drive? If thats the case then you dont want to partition & format the ssd. Intel will handle that when you enable acceleration.


The SSD drive is comming from my old PC. For some reason win7 32bit will not let me have admin access to delete some the files, weird, because i'm the only user. I dont need to secure erase (too many unecessary read writes). I just want to wipe the directory to release the space. The board has 2 SATA connections for the Marvell chip to manage. It only needs to be set to RAID 0 or 1 within the Marvell BIOS section, at least thats what i've understood so far from the board manual. I already have a Samsung 120 SSD running the OS and main Software, so I dont need to partition the Marvell SSD its only 60GB and the max is 64GB. My understanding is setting the allocation unit size to small will not waste space but will be slower. Setting it larger will lose space if your using small files. I'm trying to establish what size files will be used when playing games. It may be purely accademic, as I have no idea to what degree a few kilobytes of unit size will have on performance. My logic is if they are large files then the unit size should be high. I haven't been able to find a chart.

:??: 
a c 971 G Storage
April 21, 2014 6:51:31 PM

so you want to use the ssd as a cache drive? If thats the case then you dont want to partition & format the ssd. Intel will handle that when you enable acceleration.
April 21, 2014 4:37:17 AM

i7Baby said:
Read the instructions for the particular Marvell RAID chip you've got. It should at least give you a clue


I've done that and there's nothing, not surprising really, I wouldn't think Gygabyte/Marvell would know what hardware or software we're using and could not recommend format settings for different file types and sizes.
a c 129 G Storage
April 21, 2014 4:19:37 AM

Read the instructions for the particular Marvell RAID chip you've got. It should at least give you a clue

See all answers