Best stripe size for multitrack audio recording?

[Kobaia]

Hi guys,

I just bought two 80Gb SATA drives which I will configure to RAID 1 (two drives as one) and I'll be doing some home studio recording on them with cubase SX.

What's the best stripe size in terms of performance for audio recording?

Thanx in advanx

[Kobaia]

Best stripe size for best performance in general then?

Game level loading times, DVD shrink, etc...

[Kobaia]

bump...

[Colossus]

I personally never really seen a difference in strip size with RAID 1. So my RAID 1 sets are 16kb.

I seen more of a difference with strip size in RAID 0 then RAID 1.

[Kobaia]

I think that what I really mean is RAID 0 (2 drives as 1) I got it mixed up there...

[Colossus]

Well both are technically two drives as 1...

RAID 0 = Best performance, NO redundency (2x drive space)
RAID 1 = Average Write/High Performance Read (1/2 total space)

I would probably stick within the 8-16KB space for RAID 0. I have a few RAID 0 with 16KB strip (some 32KB) size and they perform quite nicely...

I dont have any lower then 16KB/s.

[Kobaia]

Yep, it's RAID 0 I want!

So, you say 16~32k...

for multitrack audio simultaneous recording and playback what would be your bet?

Thanks Colossus.

[I4one]

Originally posted by Kobaia
Hi guys,

I just bought two 80Gb SATA drives which I will configure to RAID 1 (two drives as one) and I'll be doing some home studio recording on them with cubase SX.

What's the best stripe size in terms of performance for audio recording?

Thanx in advanx

RAID 0 is - 'two drives as one' (or more)
RAID 1 is - two drives (1 being a mirror of the other - or a 'Backup')

That said - from 16k - 64k would be the range I'd use to create the stripe size - simply because Audio/Vido files are larger files than standard desktop use files.

*edit 2 THough if you're keeping ONLY the data filesd on the RAID 0 setup, perhaps even larger stripe blocks would be beneficial.

*edit;
just saw that you clarified what you want (RAID 0)
a decent read;
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed...ID/RAID_08.htm

[Colossus]

Originally posted by I4one
RAID 0 is - 'two drives as one' (or more)
RAID 1 is - two drives (1 being a mirror of the other - or a 'Backup')

That said - from 16k - 64k would be the range I'd use to create the stripe size - simply because Audio/Vido files are larger files than standard desktop use files.

*edit 2 THough if you're keeping ONLY the data filesd on the RAID 0 setup, perhaps even larger stripe blocks would be beneficial.

*edit;
just saw that you clarified what you want (RAID 0)
a decent read;
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed...ID/RAID_08.htm

Thanks for wording it better then I had before

Nice link

[MrDigital]

64K is just about the best stripe size across the board for pretty much any desktop use.

-MrD

[I4one]

Originally posted by Colossus
Thanks for wording it better then I had before

Nice link

got it
I too need to correct myself - meant to say "THough if you're keeping ONLY the [Audio/Video Files] files on the RAID 0 setup..."

[Colossus]

Originally posted by MrDigital
64K is just about the best stripe size across the board for pretty much any desktop use.

-MrD

Not really

I notice my performance start to degrade after 32KB So 64KB would not be ideal...

You cannot just generalize strip size, even tho the difference between 16KB to 64KB is minimal at best, but I prefer to squeeze as much as I can

[MrDigital]

Originally posted by Colossus
Not really

I notice my performance start to degrade after 32KB So 64KB would not be ideal...

You cannot just generalize strip size, even tho the difference between 16KB to 64KB is minimal at best, but I prefer to squeeze as much as I can

I want to see benchmarks. I don't believe that anything you do on a normal desktop is seeing a performance increase from <64KB stripe.

Yes, I do believe you can generalize strip size. There are very few instances where <64KB makes sense. SQL Servers for one, they make use of <64KB stripe. Any desktop machine is far better at 64KB stripe than anything else. 128KB is too big, by far. 32KB is too small, but doable if you can't for 64KB for some reason, but certainly anything below that is a bad idea.

EDIT: 128KB is bad for anything besides a pure storage stripe, like for mp3s or videos, in which case the bigger the stripe the better.

EDIT2: This is what the drive-testing masters at StorageReview.com say: "IMO, default should be 64 KB stripe size for most people. Small stripe sizes improve STR benchmarks, but are not indicative of real world performance. I would also go so far as to say that, for most non-STR dependent, non-sequential I/O applications (i.e., most desktop computing tasks except for A/V editing), "bigger is better", and that 128 KB would be preferable to 16-32 KB. With large stripe sizes, you're going to get STR benchmark results that don't seem much better than single drive results, but you are going to get better real world performance than smaller stripe sizes that give excellent STR benchmark results."

-MrD

[Colossus]

Here is a great program to benchmark drive performance.. Better then Sandra

Specs:
Maxtor 200GB x 2 RAID 0 (on ICH5R)

ATT0: 16k cluster



ATT0: 32k cluster*



ATT0: 64k cluster



ATT0: 128k cluster




*Please excuse this result, I had forgotten to change the "total length" from 4mb to 32mb. So my Reads are off

[OS-Wiz]

Picking strip/clustersize is totally dependent on the avg. size of the files you use most often, or is most important to perform well. So, you really need to determine that first. Let's say you find that your avg. write/read is 32k -- then choose a strip/clustersize of half that, or 16k to exploit RAID 0. And yes, NTFS clustersizes can be choosen to match your strip size.