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Best block size for SSD RAID 0, Samsung 840 512gb

What block size are people using for a RAID 0 setup, and how does that impact speed and lifetime of the SSDs ? ..Samsung 512Gb 840 SSDs (x2). I've noticed some decline in performance (5-10%) in the last year. ( I have Trim enabled) But that could be for many different reasons, e.g. The disk has more stuff on it.


Is there one block size that's better or recommended for this setup or is it not that big a deal?

MAC MINI SERVER (LATE 2012), OS X Server, OSX 10.9.1

Posted on Feb 6, 2014 9:27 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Feb 6, 2014 3:07 PM

What are you using the Raid0 setup for?


From Computerweekly:


For example, if your business works with lots of video or large image files, you will want to ensure maximum throughput. That means you will need to spread data across individual drives as much as possible. For this use case smaller RAID chunk sizes (for example, 512 bytes -- one block -- to 8 KB) fit the bill because you want to take data from one drive while the others seek the next chunks to be read.


At the other extreme in terms of use cases would be running a database in which the amount of data read on each operation is small, say, up to 4 KB. Here you want a single I/O to be dealt with by one drive with one seek action rather than be spilt between more than one drive and multiple seeks. So, for use cases such as databases and email servers, you should go for a bigger RAID chunk size, say, 64 KB or larger.



From Toms Hardware:

If you access tons of small files, a smaller stripe size like 16K or 32K is recommended. For primarily large, sequential accesses like video files, a higher stripe size like 128K is recommended. If you're not doing either one of these, then a good overall size for many applications is 64K.


The block size would refer to what sector size the RAID controller abstracts to the computer. In virtually all cases, this is 512 bytes and is not changeable. Although, I have seen some high-end SAN units that can alter the block size, although this technique is incompatible with all versions of Windows except Vista.

2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Feb 6, 2014 3:07 PM in response to Halfmoonh4

What are you using the Raid0 setup for?


From Computerweekly:


For example, if your business works with lots of video or large image files, you will want to ensure maximum throughput. That means you will need to spread data across individual drives as much as possible. For this use case smaller RAID chunk sizes (for example, 512 bytes -- one block -- to 8 KB) fit the bill because you want to take data from one drive while the others seek the next chunks to be read.


At the other extreme in terms of use cases would be running a database in which the amount of data read on each operation is small, say, up to 4 KB. Here you want a single I/O to be dealt with by one drive with one seek action rather than be spilt between more than one drive and multiple seeks. So, for use cases such as databases and email servers, you should go for a bigger RAID chunk size, say, 64 KB or larger.



From Toms Hardware:

If you access tons of small files, a smaller stripe size like 16K or 32K is recommended. For primarily large, sequential accesses like video files, a higher stripe size like 128K is recommended. If you're not doing either one of these, then a good overall size for many applications is 64K.


The block size would refer to what sector size the RAID controller abstracts to the computer. In virtually all cases, this is 512 bytes and is not changeable. Although, I have seen some high-end SAN units that can alter the block size, although this technique is incompatible with all versions of Windows except Vista.

Feb 6, 2014 4:01 PM in response to chattphotos

chattphotos wrote:


What are you using the Raid0 setup for?




Braggin' Rights mostly 😉


I mainly wanted to see how fast I could make it go. 😎 I'm an Engr and I love tinkering, I used to build my own PCs, then the world changed and I discovered Mac.


What I use it for... as far as file handing: Right now it's my Media Server for Photos, Movies & Music and for Image Backups for my other Macs. Most of my music and photos range from 6-25 MB files, videos are HD, a few are 25 Gb, most are around 2 Gb. All I use the Server for is Time Machine and CCC imaging for my other 3 Macs. So I'm guessing 128k or 256k, not sure.


How much a difference does the right or wrong block size make? Any impact on SSD life?


While I was typing this, I rebuilt the RAID w/256k and that seems to have gotten me back to the original speeds I had a year ago... no idea if block size had anything to do with it. Wooo Hoo! that's fast ! I know I don't need anywhere near this for what I'm doing. But if you've got 2 SSDs, why wouldn't you RAID them? I backup, I'm not worried about one failing. I know you want to minimize the no. of writes, so you wouldn't want RAID 1. In my mind RAID 0 balances the load, the speed is FREE! God save me if they do the Mini's what they did to Retina MBPs !!


😀


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Best block size for SSD RAID 0, Samsung 840 512gb

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