It's not about the OS, its about the motherboard or RAID card controller/drivers

Yes, its the same and if the motherboad does not allow 128K (minimum with a 2 disk RAID-0 setup) or larger STRIPE, you are better off on a single WD Raptor with FSX on it (away from the Windows install) and that disk formatted in Windows with a cluster size of 64K. I would fomat the RAID array to either 32-64K clusters as well. You will lose total disk space (several gigs) of the drive if you format to 32-64K clusters over the default of Windows 4k, but, the disk will not fragment any where near as bad over time as you use FSX and the resulting file reads are much more streamlined for the large files FSX lays on the disk.

For best results, I would use a 256K STRIPE for a 2 drive RAID array and 128K for a 4 drive array. 128 will work but there is a give and take in CPU cycles being sucked up from 2 drives in RAID on 128K, even with a Q6600 processor. Since a 256K STRIPE will reduce head seek that effect is reduced quite a bit.

You will need special software to to format above 4K in Windows like Partition Magic or Disk Director. The Windows format system will not allow a 64K cluster format, and, (very important) you can not format any OS partition above 4K clusters to any disk, only ones that hold data outside the OS partition. If you intend to put it all on one array, (FSX and the OS) thats fine, but you will have to leave the default cluster format performed during Windows install or Windows will not boot from that disk.

Come to think of it, I am not sure if Vista will handle 64K on a secondary disk as I have not experimented with all the different disk layouts in Vista as of yet. I was waiting for the full release of SP1 for Vista due in January before continuing with Vista tweak research and lists.


That is one thing you will need to try for yourself and see how it fairs. The problem is, will the disk partiton software run correctly on Vista.. make SURE it is designed for Vista use.

I wont be porting everything over to Vista until MS gets their act together and patches it further than SP1. DX10 is a preview, not a complete re-write and I do just fine on XP with FSX, although I do run Vista 64 too in order to see the differences and work tweaks. DX10 does have its advantages and what it is doing, is good so far but the rest of the OS has much to be desired for the software and hardware I use so until MS catches up with that, I'm on XP.

It was not until SP2 that XP shined.. which is par cor the course and I am sure it will be that way with Vista too, especially with the new Intel, Nvidia and AMD designs hitting the market in Q1-Q2 of next year.

Thanks Nick.