64K blocks

[Dave]

I am rebuilding my machine with a bigger drive formatted to 64k and have a general question for all.

I have

IBM netvista 2.0G
800megs ram
pvr350
40gig western digital 2meg buffer
200gig western digital 8meg buffer formatted 64k

For best performance would you install sage on the 40 gig and point the software to the 200gig 64k drive or install everything on the 64k drive?

I would love to hear what people have had the best luck with or what is considered best practice. Thanks.

[gplasky]

I have Sage installed on a 60GB drive with the OS and other apps. I have 2 x 160GB SATA in RAID 0 formatted in 64K blocks so I have 320GB total storage for recordings.

Gerry

[falchulk]

Its only recommended to place the recordings on drives formatted as 64k. The programfiles get no benefit from it. I have sage installed on a 60gig partition of a 200 gig drive. I use the left over 140gig partition for recordings as well as 2 additional 250 gig drives just for recording. You dont have to use any raid config unless you want fault tolerence. Just add it under video directory.

[sixdoubleo]

Originally posted by Dave
IFor best performance would you install sage on the 40 gig and point the software to the 200gig 64k drive or install everything on the 64k drive?

The first one. It is always best practice to separate program and data....Sage is no exception.

[DFA]

Do not put the Sage app (or any other apps) within the recording partition or dedicated recording drive. I think you will find that is the unamous concensus and for good technical reasons.

DFA

[kny3twalker]

what is the best tool for formatting a drive to 64K ?
I am thinking about another drive, for a while now, and think I saw some good prices in Sunday's adds......

[stanger89]

Windows can format a drive to 64k blocks just fine.

[Dave]

With 2000 and xp just got to administrative tools/computer managment/disk managment.

When you find your new partition and pick to format it you will have a dropdown that says "default". In that list will be about 8 choices one of which is 64k.

I am not sure about outside utilities but they are out there.

[mikejaner]

Just remember, you can't format the drive Windows is on to 64k. Or at least from the Disk Management Interface ;-P

[Dave]

Agreed, forgot to mention that.

[kny3twalker]

Thanks
I just wondered I know my harddrive is currently 4K so when I get my new one I got to be ready, LOL...
Anyways, thanks

[ezeitler]

I am moving my setup into a very small MATX case. I have a 40G drive with Win2K, Sage, etc on it and a 200G drive for recording. The 200G is 64K blks. Due to power supply cable restraints, I can only put one drive in the new case. I was going to partition the 200G into 40G/160G and format the 160M into 64K blks. Any comments, caveats, dire warnings, etc??

[Worf]

That is basically what I am doing with my setup. I have a 160 gig drive with 5 gig for the OS and the rest for storage with 64K blocks. It works fine.

[Dave]

For everyone who used a 4k partition for recording then switched to a 64k partition, did you notice a big performance increase or more stability??????????????

[falchulk]

To tell the truth, I noticed not one bit of diffrence. I did not really have a problem with the windows default.

[chako]

I didn't see any difference either. I did it because you guys are really smart and I wanted to be like you. It very stable... still.

[gplasky]

One of the advantages in going with the 64k block size is the reduction of fragmented files I believe. This way with all of the creating and deleting of video files you wouldn't have the fragmentation issue you would with 4k blocks. This in effect will help your performance.

Gerry

[falchulk]

Yep qplasky, in theory. he wanted to know if anyone "saw" an improvement. I never defraged my drives....not when they were default or now. I never had stuttering or any other problem.

[sixdoubleo]

Originally posted by kny3twalker
what is the best tool for formatting a drive to 64K ?
I am thinking about another drive, for a while now, and think I saw some good prices in Sunday's adds......

Just right-click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management. Then create the partition. Then select the partition, right-click, and select format. Then from there you can choose the block size.

or something like "format d: /FS:NTFS /A:64K" from the command line should do the trick. (assuming you already created the partition).

I'd just use the GUI method if you've never done it.

[Dave]

falchulk is right on. I was interested to know if formatting in 64k helped anyone who was having performance and stability issues.