-
Cluster Size for Video Editing
I know this has been discussed before but I can’t seem to find the posts. I’m looking for recommendations for the best cluster sizes to use for the hard drives that I use for vegas 7. I have a RAID 0 drive for capturing AVIs, another drive for storage of graphics, music and sound FX libraries that are identified in Media Manager so I can view and drag them onto the timeline, and then of course I have a third drive for the Windows XP OS and all programs including Vegas 7. They are all SATA II drives currently set to 4Kb cluster sizes. My read and write speeds seem to be low when checked with Performance Test 6.0 benchmark software. Can someone suggest a better cluster size to use for each of those drives that might increase the drive speeds.
-
1 Reply
-
Hi,
cluster sizes do not affect performance a lot, but
the ability to use/waste the drive space.
The clusters size is the smallest segment on the drive
you can allocate.
For example:
You have 4KB cluster size, and you have to store 1KB of data ->
you have to allocate one cluster, which is 4KB, in that you store
1KB, so 3KB wasted.
If you generally store lot of small files, decreasing cluster size
you get more drive space (less wasted space). If you sotre huge files, such as DV AVI, wav, etc., decreasing cluster size only
pumps up the size required to administrate the files on the drive,
thus you loose some space.If you mean stripe sizes, it DOES affect of a RAIDs performance.
Assume we’re talking about RAID0 with 2 HDDs.
The dataflow is divided between the 2 disks, so theoretically you get “one” drive performing 2 times faster. Knowing that a drive can perform faster in burst mode (transferring larger data blocks is faster) you should set up the stripe size according to this.
So, that size depends on your drive.I recommend to set up the RAID with different stripe sizes starting 32KB up to the biggest available.
Each time format – benchmark, and see which gives the best performance.By(t)e
K.L.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up