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General Purpose RAID 0 "Chunk Size"?

fyi: using macOS 13 Ventura on a Macbook Pro M1 Max.


i have an older Western Digital My Passport Pro with a Thunderbolt 2 interface (using an Apple Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter/dongle). it's the one with 2 HHD's in it.


it came setup as RAID 0 but formatted in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". i want to reformat it to use "APFS" instead.


so using Disk Utility, i deleted the RAID and reformatted the drives. then upon using Disk Utility's RAID Assistant, i selected the RAID type to RAID 0 and selected the two newly reformatted drives. then on the next screen (Set Properties), under where you choose the Name & Format, there's a setting to select a "Chunk Size".


i've never seen this option before (granted it's been many many many years since i needed to re-RAID something), and i can't figure out which option to select...


the Chunk size options are: 16K, 32K, 64K, 128K, or 256K.


everything i've found to read on the subject says that's determined by how big the files you're working with are. to choose a small K when working with large videos & graphics files; and to choose a large K when working with smaller text based files.


but what if you have a mix for ALL kinds of files & sizes?


what would be the optimal Chunk size for a general purpose drive?


yes, i could just choose the middle one (64K) but i don't know if that's optimally average or if leaning to the left or right of middle would be better for such a mix of file types & sizes.


i did contact WD support and instead of just telling me what Chunk Size the drives came from the factory set at, their 'only' solution is for me to download/install their disk utility app. i had problems with that app working well two computers ago, so chose to not install it on my previous & current systems. i would rather a solution to be knowledge rather than 'another' app to clutter my mac innards just for this purpose. thanks.


MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 13.3

Posted on May 21, 2023 10:26 AM

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Posted on May 22, 2023 1:25 PM

FYI: i asked this same thing & got a satisfactory answer over @ https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/460163/how-to-discover-choose-raid-chunk-size

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General Purpose RAID 0 "Chunk Size"?

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