Block Size and Checkpoints (NT)

Could someone help me with block sizes for Oracle 7.3 under NT 4? I'm quite new to both NT and Oracle, so please forgive me if the answers seem obvious.

I'm using a 4 GB disk (NTFS). I believe the OS block size (called 'cluster' I think) for disks of that size under NT is 4 kB, but I'm not sure. How do I find out?

The recommended value for Oracle's DB_BLOCK_SIZE parameter for small databases is 2 kB. Now I wonder, is it really ok to use a smaller DB block size than the actual OS block size (in my case presumably 4 kB)?

Lastly, I want my checkpoints to occur only at logswitches (that's actually why I started looking into block sizes). It seems there are two different parameters which achieve this:

1. setting LOG_CHECKPOINT_INTERVAL to a number larger than there are OS blocks in the redo log file
2. setting LOG_CHECKPOINT_TIMEOUT to zero.

Do I have to use both parameters or is it enough to set one of them? What's the difference between the two parameters/methods?

Thank you very much in advance

Fatman

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Thu Oct 01 1998 - 01:22:01 CDT