Hi Steve, > 1. I wouldn't touch ext4 for this.
Why? > 2. What about reiser4? Reiser is much better for smaller files, where ext4 (extents) and xfs are much better for larger files like I'm using. > 3. PARTITIONING! Having just lived through it, watch out for the newer > ( WD only?? ) disks with 4kB sectors but don't report it. That brought > throughput down to < 1MB/sec. I think you mean alignment of the partition, which is kind of what I'm talking about. But in your case your drive had 4KB sectors vs typical 512B. > 4. If your primary intention is performance ( rather than getting the > best of all worlds ), why not RAID10? IMO disks are too cheap to worry > with RAID5. ( 1.5TB is certainly the sweet spot pricewise, but most > mobos have 6 SATA slots ) I would agree that RAID10 is much better for write performance. But for read and cost, RAID5 does outperforms RAID10. And adding a drive to RAID5 only increases the cost and read performance ratio. I do like RAID10's ability to lose up to N/2 drives and write performance though. Plus I have six ports, but need the last port for the DVD/Blu-ray drive as they seem to be SATA only. > > I would certainly do some basic testing, as the best answer will depend > on the hardware you choose, and the mix of sizes of the files you wish > to serve. I have had poor performance from some mobos and SATA ( ATI > Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller as an example ) drivers, so > some research is a good idea. > Yeah, I just was trying not to spend a week rebuilding and testing the array. Cheers, sV
