RAID 0 partitioning - should I?

[Ezn73]

I have 2 SATA 320GB in a HW RAID 0.
Results in 596GB usable.
No other internal HD present. Have external backup drive.

1. What would be the optimal stripe and cluster sizes? I know there's debate on this and I have read a lot of it, just wanted some additional feedback on these specs.

2. Also, is there any point to making a 32GB or 64GB C: partition for the OS (Win XP) with the remaining as D: for storage? Or, does this negate the speed advantage of RAID 0? Should I just make it one 596MB C: drive for everything?

3. Finally, should I put a pagefile on both partitions (if partitioning like the above scenario)?

p.s. I don't want to not RAID and have 2 physical drives of 320GB. I may add a small(er) 10K rpm HD later just for OS, but that's another day. For now I definitely want the RAID 0.

Thanks!

 

[Chimworth]

I believe it was 128 kb for performance use. I opted not to partition because (like you) I have an external for back up and don't care if I have to reinstall (assuming partitions are only good for recovery options). Though I don't think a partition would hamper performance that much and if it is only games you are worried about all of those files will be on the system's partition anyways.

 

[Nodsu]

The optimal stripe size depends heavily on your exact filesystem, files you work on, your workload and the specific benchmark program

As a rule of thumb, for single-tasking smaller is better.

From partitioning point of view a RAID array is just like a single disk.
So when considering your partitions, just forget that you have RAID and think of it as one big disk.