Anyone know of a way of checking what a systems typical disk access profile is? I just curious when the system does large block transfers versus small block transfers, and what large and small mean in those contexts.
I just switched my Mac Pro to a 4 disk RAID, and one of the options was setting the block size. I went with 64K as a compromise between the really big stuff like images and video, and all the little stuff the machine also spends its time doing. I'm not looking to get into one of those "why do you need RAID?" arguments-- it's made Aperture appear more responsive, and so I'm happy. (The other reason was simply that I'd run out of space and needed to expand total storage). What I'm interested in is how to best tune performance.
This is something that's been bugging me ever since the Great Flash Drive Debates when the Air came out. SSDs are better at certain operations than others, but how do we tell what our machine is actually doing?
I just switched my Mac Pro to a 4 disk RAID, and one of the options was setting the block size. I went with 64K as a compromise between the really big stuff like images and video, and all the little stuff the machine also spends its time doing. I'm not looking to get into one of those "why do you need RAID?" arguments-- it's made Aperture appear more responsive, and so I'm happy. (The other reason was simply that I'd run out of space and needed to expand total storage). What I'm interested in is how to best tune performance.
This is something that's been bugging me ever since the Great Flash Drive Debates when the Air came out. SSDs are better at certain operations than others, but how do we tell what our machine is actually doing?