> > Ive read bonnie++ stuff till I cant stand it no more and am just not seeing > the relevance in the end result vectors to something tangible. > > Please advise and thanks in advance... You have got this part right. bonnie++ was irrevelant...was because the guy has finally added an option to disable write buffering. Try bonnie++ without write buffering... However, that still does not make the results very useful...the best thing would be to simulate what your application would do to your disk subsystem and filesystem. Here is an example of a good benchmark for those doing mail storage with the Maildir format: http://untroubled.org/benchmarking/2004-04/ Complete with the tools needed for you to perform your own tests.