During the next couple of months I will start working on a new
lease on a HP3000.  One of the issues that always confronts me each
time I do this is choosing the correct disk configuration.   Our
applications here are very IO intensive and require the best
possible configuration.  Currently our HP3k 939 has 7 2g Drives
(14g total) spreading the load as best we can do using disk
management software from Bradmark which has done a good job keeping
the IO load fairly even between all drives.  No real complains
about performance with this configuration.

The new disk configuration estimate right now will probably be
increased to 20 to 25g.  My question is with 9g drives available, 3
of these new drives will fulfill my needs, can I get the same IO
performance as I do with 7 2g drives?  Does having 6 4g drives
produce more IO/sec (evenly Balanced) than 3 9g drives?  With these
high speed access drives does this issue even an issue anymore with
the amount of caching done within the operating system?  Does the
number of physical spindles make a difference anymore with todays
disk technology?  Thanks in advance for your comments.

Kimber Renk