Quick q for the computer wizards

[Quiggers]

Hi guys,

A mate of mine has an array, it's about 2.5 terabytes and needs to be reformatted, (as it's been playing up, the current partitioning is a dogs breakfast) I suggested the partitioning would work well at 200gbs per...

12 partitions would suit his operation very well.

The array hangs off a HP thingo running XP and it's only used as a video edit system, Avid Express.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks, GQ

[jik22]

Any thoughts or suggestions?


The true answer really depends on how clever the array controller is. XP can handle big disks fine, and I presume if it's for video he's doing the usual stuff like using maximum cluster sizes and the like (As there won't be wasted space taken by small files) to optimise performance, so there's not much to be gained from over-partitioning. In practise, though there are theoretical advantages to doing it certain ways (Which the RAID controller techies are usually happy to discuss for their particular model) I've never found it makes that much difference in practise...

[grumpybastard]

I dont see any reason to partition the Raid Array at all except for neatness?

eg: 3 partitions- OS / Apps / Files

But the trouble with this is when you fill the apps partition etc it turns into a dogs breakfast.

Theres no performance boost by partitioning drives and your not even getting close to max volume size for XP, so if it was me i would have only 1 volume

[dmdigital]

As said I wouldn't partition it either. If the controller allows it you'd get more functionality, redundancy and better throughput by splitting it into mirrored strip sets based on disk capacity. If its only being used as an editing scratch disk then I'd be using stripping to give better performance.

[incisor]

my 2cents

always a good thing to have an install/boot partition and a separate data partition so you dont risk data during a repair install.

[jik22]

my 2cents

always a good thing to have an install/boot partition and a separate data partition so you dont risk data during a repair install.

Good advice, but I was assuming this RAID array was JUST for the data, and not booting the OS as well - on a video editing machine, I'd have OS, swap and temp elsewhere anyway, so nothing impacts streaming the data....

[incisor]

i was more or less answering what the grumpy old fella said... not so much the original question...

[Quiggers]

Thanks guys,

The OS and the apps live on a separate 80gb hdd, which is inside the main computer. The array is only for media data, as in video and audio files.

Cheers, GQ