[OT?] RAID 0 chunk size question...

[legacy-new|user]

Depends on your chipset controller mostly. The Intel ICHR5 performs best at 16k hands down, nearly the same at 32k, and noticeable drops at anything else. You need to do HDD benchmarks to find your best stripe size.

Yes you can defrag RAID 0 and you will need to more often the lower your stripe size.

[legacy-Psycho Dad]

Originally posted by senshu
That depends on your point of view. With one drive, if it dies you'll lose everything. With a RAID 0, if one drive dies you lose everything. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

To the thread starter, my recommendation is to not RAID. Especially if you only have the two drives and will be booting from the RAID.

It's true you lose everything either way, but my point was that you have twice as much chance of losing everything with two drives. If you had 100 drives and if one of them failed then you'd lose everything, you'd be pretty freakin nervous, wouldn't you?

[legacy-senshu]

That depends on your point of view. With one drive, if it dies you'll lose everything. With a RAID 0, if one drive dies you lose everything. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

To the thread starter, my recommendation is to not RAID. Especially if you only have the two drives and will be booting from the RAID.

[legacy-Psycho Dad]

Will I get a WL for posting twice in a row?

Anyway, doesn't a RAID 0 setup basically double your chances for a catastropic failure? Don't you have two drives acting as one, and if you lose one you've lost everything on both?

[legacy-Psycho Dad]

Judging from the responses, and what little I have read about it, I'd say drop the RAID 0 setup and go back to standard HDs.

On the other hand you said that you had another RAID 0 setup that increased load times dramatically. Well now I'm as confused as you are.

Honestly I don't know many people that use RAID setups. Those that do seem to do it just because they can. In the end, I think a 10K RPM drive would probably blow away any RAID 0 setup as far as gaming is concerned. But again, I'm no expert.

[legacy-ShmengeTravel]

man, now I have no idea what to do. Should I stick with the RAID array or just use the two HDD's as standard SATA?

[RoadKillGrill]

last i heard, raid 0 hurts load times or has negectable differance

[legacy-Psycho Dad]

Originally posted by st_trooper
Just to add that this is a worst case scenario.

I always found RAID 0 to be completely overrated especially for gaming.

Naw, I always make sure my files are a multiple of chunk size + 1.

Yes, it was the worse case, but I was just trying to make a point. Like I said, 128 seems really small. With chunk sizes of 2048 or 4096 quite a lot of space can be wasted, especially if you have lots of small files. If you mostly do video editing then you'd want to make the chunk size as large as possible. I'm sure there is some optimum size for the average gamer type person.

[legacy-st_trooper]

Just to confirm, you can defrag a RAID 0.

I also find defragging to be overrated. I defrag about once a year.

[da ghost]

Originally posted by Psycho Dad
Really? Why not? And wouldn't the performance degrade over time because of fragmentation?

It's because the data is fragmented no matter what (the definition of RAID 0. It it was defragmented, it would actually be slower :haha::haha::haha: ). The RAID controller just can't handle fragmentation and rearrangement of data like that. besides, no matter how fragmented it gets (ok maybe not THAT fragmented) it still will be faster that than standard SATA drives.

Unless there are new controllers out there...if there are, you need to TELL ME!!!!

EDIT: well, senshu's got one...
EDIT2: and st trooper... looks like I'm outdated...

[legacy-senshu]

Yes, you can (and should) defrag a RAID 0 array.

No, there is no major benefit for gaming. Only very I/O intensive apps (video editing, etc.) will benefit from RAID 0 these days. Even that's questionable...my raided Raptors fly, once they get spinning. :bored:

[legacy-st_trooper]

Originally posted by Psycho Dad
The "chunk" size, which I assume is the same as "allocation unit" size, is the minimum amount of data that can be allocated for file space. Say, for instance, you had a file that that was 128,001 bytes in size, and the chunk size was 128. The file system would allocate 1,001 chunks for this file, but the file only uses 1 byte in the last chunk, so 127 bytes are wasted and can't be used for anything else. Now suppose you had 1,000 files (you actually have 10s, or even 100s of thousands of files on a typical hard drive). With a chunk size of 128, it's possible that 127,000 bytes of data could be wasted if each file only used 1 byte in the last chunk allocated to it.

If the chunk size was 64 then this same situation would only waste 63,000 bytes (about half). So why wouldn't you want to use the smallest chunk size? Because the larger the chunk size the less a file will get fragmented. Also, and probably most importantly, because the larger the chunk size, the faster the file can be manipulated because larger chunks are being moved at a time.

Just to add that this is a worst case scenario.

I always found RAID 0 to be completely overrated especially for gaming.

[legacy-Psycho Dad]

Originally posted by da ghost
Sorry, but I don't think that you can defrag a RAID 0 array:noob:

Really? Why not? And wouldn't the performance degrade over time because of fragmentation?

[da ghost]

Originally posted by ShmengeTravel
what does he mean by being "less efficient" on space? What, would I have to defrag a lot?

Sorry, but I don't think that you can defrag a RAID 0 array:noob:

[legacy-Psycho Dad]

The "chunk" size, which I assume is the same as "allocation unit" size, is the minimum amount of data that can be allocated for file space. Say, for instance, you had a file that that was 128,001 bytes in size, and the chunk size was 128. The file system would allocate 1,001 chunks for this file, but the file only uses 1 byte in the last chunk, so 127 bytes are wasted and can't be used for anything else. Now suppose you had 1,000 files (you actually have 10s, or even 100s of thousands of files on a typical hard drive). With a chunk size of 128, it's possible that 127,000 bytes of data could be wasted if each file only used 1 byte in the last chunk allocated to it.

If the chunk size was 64 then this same situation would only waste 63,000 bytes (about half). So why wouldn't you want to use the smallest chunk size? Because the larger the chunk size the less a file will get fragmented. Also, and probably most importantly, because the larger the chunk size, the faster the file can be manipulated because larger chunks are being moved at a time.

Actually 128 is pretty small. I think my HD is formatted with 2048 0r 4096 byte chunks (or allocation unit size).

EDIT: I have no idea if the chunk size is what's causing your performance problems. It's possible that there is another bottleneck somewhere, and knowing nothing about SATA or RAID setups I'm afraid I can't help.