Raid Stripe Size

[IRQ Conflict]

Hello, I am getting 4 7200.11 500GB drives and will be using them in an 975XBX2 (Intel Matrix). I have never done raid befor and will either go with Raid 0 or Raid 10. Does anyone have a good idea as to what stripe size I should use? It's an all purpose machine and I use it for playing games and photo editing.

Also have Vista 64bit SP1 and was wondering if that supports the raid so I don't have to resort to installing the matrix driver for raid. Your comments are most appreciated.

[DMB2000uk]

I'm running with 128kb stripes.

Larger stripes work better for large files, and smaller stripes work better for smaller files is the general rule.
I read into it lots when i was setting things up, but can't remeber now why i chose that size

128kb must have been a nice all round size.

Dan

[IRQ Conflict]

I like nice and round. I'll start there and work my way down. thanks. Would large textures for games say, Karls Texture pack for Oblivion or FakeFactory's Cinematic Mod for HL2 be large enough to warrant a large block?

[Zertz]

I wouldn't use too large blocks, 256KB at most unless you only work with very big files. Because if you have big stripes and Windows needs to read a 2KB file, it'll still have to read 512KB or whatever you set it at which is "alot" of wasted time.

[IRQ Conflict]

No worries. Thanks for posting. However my BIOS only goes up to 64KB blocks I found out when I installed it.

[DMB2000uk]

Well 64kb is a decent size too, and is actually slightly faster than 128kb (though the difference is probably unnoticeable)

Dan

[DX]

You will want to use the matrix driver and not rely on the software raid built into Vista.