Stripe size for Raid 5?

[Greebo]

I have 4 x 2Tb drives im going to put into an Raid 5 array.

Mainly will be used to store videos and photos but also will be used as my main gaming drive on my system.

Operating drive is on a ssd.

On a x99 platform so using the Intel built in controller.

What strip size should i use?

32, 64, 128 or even 256?

Ive tried googling and reading up and you seem to find about 10 different opinions.

Im not bothered about loosing space as i have just moved up from 2.5TB so 6TB under raid 5 is going to be a massive step up anyway.

Quick answer appreciated as setting it up this evening.

Thanks

 

[Deleted member 138126]

What array controller do you have? With the SmartArray you can change stripe size on the fly (from memory) without any impact to the data. I would just leave the default.

Stripe size doesn't affect space available. It's just how the array controller calculates parity.

 

[Rroff]

IIRC smaller sizes can stress cpu/hardware a little more but can improve latency and performance in certain areas while larger sizes can improve sustained large transfers? of the top of my head can't remember what I usually use but probably 64 or 128.

 

[Greebo]

No idea what controller iot is rotr, its the Intrel one built into the Gigabyte x99 SOF Force motherboard.

Ill just go with whatever default is and leave it at that. Doubt I will notice.

I thought stripe size dis affect space? eg a 4k file will take up 64k or 128k of space depending on strip[e size. Ege all files are round up to your stripe size?

SO lots of small files would consume lots of space (not going to have many small files, just the odd ones from games)

Thanks for the help and suggestions anyway guys.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

The RAID stripe (or strip) size is purely how the RAID controller splits the task of calculating parity, and has nothing to do with disk allocation (that is the cluster size you are thinking of). As Rroff said, smaller stripes will provide lower latency (the controller reads the whole stripe, so a smaller stripe is quicker to read), but also probably has a higher load on the controller. Not worth spending too much time obsessing over, the default is fine.