Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

[gigabyter]

I have the followings:

MB: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
CPU: i7 920
Mem: Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D Dominator 6 GB@1600
HDD: 1 X Seagate 1.5 TB (win7-64 boot drive) & 2 X 2TB Hitachi in RAID0

I want to optimize the raid0 array as storage for Windows Media Center HDTV recordings and for HD video processing (e.g., mpeg-2 -> mpeg-4 transcoding, etc.).

What is would be best for the RAID 0 stripe size? (128K is default)
What would be optimum for the RAID 0 format block size?

Thanks!

[artdrivers]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

512 KB block size normally will give you your best performance size.

[SCSIraidGURU]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

RAID 0 is not fault tolerant so do you backups.

Stripe size of 64KB for the RAID controller is best for most users. 128KB is for SQL databases or arrays that have very large files as the majority. You will find the majority of your files on a normal computer are 32-64Kb.

In Windows for the format in NTFS, 512 bytes is optimal.

This will give your stripe 128 x 512 byte blocks = 64 KB.

[curset]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

RAID 0 is not fault tolerant so do you backups.

what is it means? Is raid0 more dangerous then two HDs without raid? i am new into this concept, i have 1 tb hd and want to buy 1 more (same) too. while i was searching i found something called raid :)

i am a home user, i play games and have a movies database for my own but i can understand what is going on around the pc. If a make a raid0 setup for my 2x1tb HDs will i have disadvantages? Or can you say that i don't even need raid0 for those?

(btw i am using windows 7 64 bit, ex58ud5, i7 920, 1 tb 7200rpm WDC caviar black.)

Sorry for neverending questions and grammer mistakes if i had any.

[SCSIraidGURU]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

RAID 0 rate of failure increases (N-1)/N. Two drive increased the failure rate by 50%. One drive fails, cable comes loose, power sags on one drive. You lose your RAID array and data.

How do you backup 2 TB?

[curset]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

RAID 0 rate of failure increases (N-1)/N. Two drive increased the failure rate by 50%. One drive fails, cable comes loose, power sags on one drive. You lose your RAID array and data.

How do you backup 2 TB?

Thank you for your helps to make me understand but i am not familiar with HD errors. I didn't have any yet.

as i understand:

i have A,B,C datas on my HD.

with out raid0. If the any part of A data on hd takes damage i lose A data. HD can't read it but i can use the B and C.

with raid0 my datas will be like A1,A2,B1,B2,C1,C2
if a drive takes damage including A1 and B2 (for example) i can't use A and B data right? One error doesn't destroy all?

if i am right with these. if i have 1 drive the chance of getting an error is "x". If i have 2 it will be like "2x" ? Because both of them can be damaged and they depend on each other?

And if 1 HD dies for some reason it will kill the other HD as well. They are like siamese twins?

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

One fatal error in RAID 0 means you have to format the drives and mirror over your backups, you cannot use one disk from a RAID 0 array without all the others. One error will not kill the other disk, but the date will be un-usable.

You are thinking of RAID 1, if one of those die you will still be able to get the data from the other disk, or install a new disk to mirror the other disk on to.

[Psycho101]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

Indeed.

RAID levels are complex.

To be honest it's not going to be such an impossible job to backup a 2TB RAID0 array. Why? Because nobody on earth as a mainstream user RAID 0's two drives then immediately fills them to capacity. There's also nothing stopping people from adding to their backup drives when necessary. A tip is not to buy 2TB drives, but get 2 1TB drives. In fact, for the price of a single 2TB WD Caviar Black, you can buy 4 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3's. I'd also avoid low power drives eg WD Caviar Green unless using in a USB/Firewire caddy where the interface is the bottle neck.

At the very minimum, I recommend people have at least 50% the RAID0 space available on a third drive as backup space. You can then either image with compression or simply copy over with compression. You're probably not going to be able to compress 2TB of data into 1TB of space but how often will you actually have 2TB of stuff to backup?

DVD's can also supplement your backup process. If authoring full quality 1080p content then a Blu-Ray drive may also be of use to you.

For the best of both worlds, a 4 drive RAID 1+0 (RAID 10) array would give a set and forget solution. A nested setup like this includes a RAID 1 array and within this a RAID 0 Array. This does mean that although two drives can be used, you'll see no performance improvement unless you configure 4 drives together.

Like Lsdmeasap says, you can have a RAID 0 array of 8 drives. If one drive fails, all your data will be lost. Everything. With a Raid 1 two drive setup for example, if one drive fails, all the data is already on the second drive which on most controllers should be usable right away. You can then replace the failed drive and re-build the mirror. Other RAID systems use parity spread across disks. This can mean that x number of drives can fail before the array is useless. If gotten to before the crucial number of drives fail, they can be replaced and the array rebuilt. Both a failed drive or the act of having to re-integrate a new drive to replace a failure can and usually does have a detrimental effect on the array (speed wise as well as security wise) until the rebuild is 100% complete.

For some light reading, not too detailed but enough to get started, read here: RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personally, for file creation that needs the speed of RAID 0 I'd use the RAID 0 to create the file(s0on, then immediately copy them over to my storage drive, maybe even a RAID 1 array for safekeeping. Don't risk what you can't afford to loose. People who don't back up will at some point, live to regret it, I assure you. It's happened to me. It only happened once though, one learns lessons quickly when 50 hours of work disappears in a screech of read/write heads hitting spinning metal.

EDIT: Just to add, the limit for stripe size on the ICH 10R is 128K. Go for that. Above this can only be achieved on add in cards on a P35/45/55, X38/48/58. Standard 4K allocation size will be fine. Large files may benefit a little from larger cluster sizes, but it's really not worth bothering with TBH.

[Vertigon]

Re: Optimum raid 0 stripe size & format block size for windows 7 media center

"People who don't back up will at some point, live to regret it, I assure you. It's happened to me."

Happened to me too. BUT the thing did run hard for over a year without an issue. Now I have an external drive.