RAID 5 query (quick replies much appreciated!)

[phillai]

Eagerly got all my bits together to build my HP MicroServer N54L but I've come to a small stumbling block.

I'm using the original 250GB HDD as the main drive for Windows Home Server 2011 and I've got 4x Western Digital Red 3TB's in what will be a RAID 5 configuration.

Whilst building the RAID 5 with the HP P410 hardware RAID controller, what strip size do I use?
Its defaulted to 256 kb but I can make it smaller or bigger upto 768 kb full strip size.

I will mainly be using this HP Microserver for storing music, movies, tv shows and arcade ROM's and CHD's.

P.S. I've got 16GB of RAM as well, not sure if this matters?

 

[rpstewart]

I would leave the stripe size as the default. The difference in performance between various sizes isn't huge.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

The SmartArray varies the default stripe size depending on the type of RAID you select, so it is my guess that they have determined the ideal defaults over many years of experience with probably hundreds of thousands of customers. I'd leave it as default.