Best way to allocate a large amount of data

From: Peter Hickman (peter_at_semantico.com)
Date: 11/30/04 

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:54:23 +0000

I have a program that requires x strings all of y length. x will be in the range
  of 100-10000 whereas the strings will all be < 200 each.

This does not need to be grown once it has been created.

Should I allocate x strings of y length or should I allocate a single string x *
y long? Which would be more efficient and / or portable?

Thank you.