Sql-server – Create new database with large initial size

1. No the only thing close to that is when you compile the server with the --with-segsize switch, this might help if your table is taking up more space than a gig and your file system can handle a single file being over a gig. If your inserting 20 gigs it will have to create 20 files if you don't use this switch. If your file system can handle a file over a gig you can just set it to a large value most likely see some benefit, worst case a small benefit.

2. Take a look at CLUSTER http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/sql-cluster.htmland FILLFACTOR http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/sql-createtable.html, http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/sql-createindex.html

Note that FILLFACTOR can be applied to both tables and indexes.

Raid 5 is slower than raid 10, especially for write-heavy workloads. As such, it is not generally recommended for SQL server and certainly not for tempdb. This alone could easily explain the performance difference.

My recommendation would be to move tempdb to raid 10.