First of all, stripe size doesn't stand for file size. It's arrangement of data through different hard disks interpreted as one hard disk, by software layer (operating system).
I used RAID0 for almost a year, until one hard disk damaged (and it was new, Samsung, so no more samsung hard disks for me hehe)
I recommend you to have at least three partitions:
1. boot and swap: its size should be memory x 1.5 at least, with NTFS block size default. The first part of any disk is 40% faster than the last part, so place your swap file in this partition.
2. OS (vista in your case): its NTFS block size should be the default too
3. data: since you have big files, I recommend the highest possible for NTFS block size.
Why I'm talking about ntfs block size? it's pretty close to stripe size.
From my experience, 64kbytes stripe size made speakers glitch when playing mp3s, I think because bigger stripe sizes means more data to load. That's why I used 16kbytes for stripe size and ntfs default block size (4kbytes).
Remember that RAID0 timings searching data are slower than a normal hard disk. This means if your search access time is 8ms, with two hard disks in raid0 will be 14-16ms!. You can prove this with Sandra software.
If your ntfs block size is, for example, 4 kbytes, your stripe size, for two hard disks, should be 8, 16, 32... kbytes. Why? If you have to save 64kbytes and your stripe size is 8kbytes and the ntfs block size is 4kbytes, then the raid controller will write this:
1. two pieces of 4kbytes in one hard disk (because the stripe size is 8 kbytes and the ntfs block size is 4kbytes)
2. the same with the other hard disk
(at this point, 16kbytes of data have been written)
3. and so on...
check this at
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/IDE_RAID/RAID_03.htm a great visual way to understand striping (i googled it a couple of minutes ago
)
As you can see, RAID0 does not mean that the information in the hard disks will be in the same place, with one part of a block in one hard disk and the other part in the another.
With bigger stripe sizes, storage will be reduced also.
I hope this helps. ask whatever you want