RAID 0 on Sonnet with Firmtek controller

[Chris Gorman]

I have the Sonnet 5 bay port multiplier with Firmtek PCI-x controller card. I want to set up two 500 gig drives as a RAID 0, using the disk utility.

I can select 32k to 256k block size. Should I use the 256k or is there a downside to that?

I'll be editing multi-cam hdv, possibly first converting the hdv to ProRes Std. 8 bit. I'll be capturing 4.5 hours of hdv footage or capturing same as ProRes Std. over fw.

Final project length will be 1.5 hours. I want to get the benefit of speed without sacrificing too much disk space.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Chris Gorman

I can select 32k to 256k block size. Should I use the 256k or is there a downside to that?

The larger block size allows for more rapid throughput. The downside is that the smallest file you can write to disk (ie. a .txt file with 1 character) will occupy 256k, instead of 32k. To the best of my knowledge, that's about it. Seek time and write time should be at their fastest with a larger block size.

[Chris Gorman]

Thanks. I wonder if there's a happy medium for video editing (8 bit ProRes 422). eg. how about some small render or other small files that might occur in a video project . . . I guess the disk space would fill up much more quickly at 256k. With less space I guess things would slow down, or worse, when the disc gets too full.

So maybe with a lot of footage, something like 128k might give good enough speed without using excess space? What do you think?