3ware Raid 5 and ext3 filesystem

["Andrew Miehs" <andrew@2sheds.de>]

Hi all!

I have a 3ware SATA Raid controller configured with 5 disks in RAID5.

I am trying to store millions of pictures on these disks, and am trying to
find out how best to configure everything...
So far

/etc/sysctl.conf
vm.max-readahead=512
vm.min-readahead=512
vm.bdflush=10 500 0 0 500 3000 10 20 0

in /etc/fstab
have mounted with 'noatime'

The filesystem structure is so that there are no more than 1000 files/
directories in one directory
When I create the filesystem, should I use the stride option? or is this
only for software raid?
If I use stride, what value should I set. The controller is set / as per
default to 64k stripes.
After mounting the filesystem, and doing my first 'ls -ln' in a directory
with 1000 pictures it takes ages!
Thanks for the help,

Andrew