2 x Velociraptors in Raid 0

jorel

jorel

jorel

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Joined
11 Mar 2007
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95
Hi

got these recently fitted in Raid 0 yet seem not as fast as 2 old seagate drives I used previously.

Wanted them primarily for video editing. Is it better to use one for OS and the other for my videos or keep them in Raid0?

Any help appreciated.

Jorel
 
Hi Jorel,

Couple of things i can think of that may help (and by the way I’ve only just read about them also).

Stripe size: Video editing you should go towards the larger end of the scale with 128k/256k but this will 'potentially' give a negative effect to the rest of the performance of the system, IE when you're not editing etc.

32K/64K are good general all rounders, that provide good performance throughout. (Also with those VR's it should fly!)

4K/16K are great for benchmarks and not much else. They pull too many small sets of data together and i guess they create a bottleneck.


Not totally sure if this will help, as I’ve never done any video editing but try enabling write back caching through storage manager. This basically doesn't write everything back to the disk all the time until absolutely necessary. Give it a go if it doesn’t help switch it off I guess.
 
If you really want to know then experiment. Make an image of your OS then it's easier and quicker to try different sizes.
 
If the two VRs are the only disks in the machine I would split them. Video editing with the footage on the same disk (even Raid0) as the OS is going to slower than with a separate disk.
 
hmm this got me wondering, I've got two WD740GD'd in Raid 0, I have my OS, apps and games on it and it's set at 128Kb stripe size, that's not good?
 
Vir said:
hmm this got me wondering, I've got two WD740GD'd in Raid 0, I have my OS, apps and games on it and it's set at 128Kb stripe size, that's not good?
Click to expand...

Its not bad either, but most good reviews back a few eyars ago showed 16KB-32KB was the best Allrounder, 64KB upwards is getting towards Pro Video work.

I tested years back and found 16KB was best for me but Windows Vista and APP's now are bigger so i would proabably go 32KB now.

If you want it super fast but will need to defrag your PC very frequently (weekly lol) use 4KB. :p
 
helmutcheese said:
Its not bad either, but most good reviews back a few eyars ago showed 16KB-32KB was the best Allrounder, 64KB upwards is getting towards Pro Video work.

I tested years back and found 16KB was best for me but Windows Vista and APP's now are bigger so i would proabably go 32KB now.

If you want it super fast but will need to defrag your PC very frequently (weekly lol) use 4KB. :p
Click to expand...

Tbh I've always found it fast but not as fast as I expected, now I read this and thought... oh this might actually be the reason why :P

So if I want to change the stripe size I need to ghost first, then set the stripe size and put the image back on it? Does that actually work, won't the image have 128 and disks 32 then? Would hte performance gain be minimal or a reasonable amount? Anyone done this before?
 
It the size every file will be split into for 1 half of each file to be on each HDD (if we are using 2 HDD's).

If you set it too big you wont split a lot of Windows + your APP's files between the HDD's.

That's why normal all round use is smaller than Video work.

If you knew the average size of all your files it would be good.

The range I know of/tested its 4KB-256KB.
 
domthecondom said:
I might need to do this aswell :O 32mb strip size


Anybody want to explain what strip size is? i always put it on auto (^^)
Click to expand...

It's the size of data writen to one of the drives in raid 0 before it alternates to the next one. Go for about 32kb as someone already suggested . :)
 
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