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I've set up FreeBSD 7.X using gstripe (RAID 0) with two 320 GB SATA disks and raw read speed went from 70 MB/s to 110 MB/s. I'd like to know if I can reasonably expect similar gains (say roughly 200 MB/s) if I add two more identical disks to the stripe set (I understand I may lose my current data in the process of reinitializing the stripe, that's not a problem right now.) A related question would be how many disks can I put in a stripe set before the speed gain flattens out?

I've got an Intel Q9550 Quad CPU and 8 GB RAM so I don't think that's going to be a bottleneck. Using ASUS motherboard SATA ports. I'm currently reading about 500 GB multiple times more or less "sequentially" as part of a data-mining experiment. I'd like to save the $$$ and avoid the headache if this is going to be a dead end. TIA

hotei
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1 Answers1

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Yes, in terms of performance you can expect to get just about the sum of all the drives. Do note that your seek time will be the maximum of all drives. The slowest drive will determine your seek time.

Your speed gain will be limited by the rest of the computer. Most likely your SATA controller.

Wolph
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