Streamerp2p Forum

I have a new 40G HD, and I am going to format it with FAT32 and install windoze98 on it. What is the smallest cluster size I can use?.
The default is 32k, which is very wasteful for small files, but I can choose down to 1k in the HD setup program. Anyone know?

32k is fine.... Disk is cheap.... I wouldn't worry about it too much

The first answer was kinda short....

You can certianly increase your disk utilization efficency by using a smaller block size BUT there is a performance trade off while using FAT32 and the smaller block size. By creating the smaller block size the disk heads must make more frequent movements, reducing performance and throughput. Also smaller block sizes will increase the need for defragmenting.

Does the block size really improve disk utilization? Yes, by as much as 25% when going from 32k to 16k blocks (it is not double the efficiency)
But the downside will be a performance hit of about 15%

So back to my first resopnse, disk is cheap. I would concentrate on performance and stick with 32k.

Now would I go to 64k to get an even better performance boost? Maybe not. That depends on the memory located on the disk controller. If you have say 8mb disk buffer then yes! Without the supporting memory structure increasing block size may just add additional overhead and actually degrade performance.

Thats FAT32. Now if you start talking NTFS (Win2k, XP) then you will automatically use small blocks (4k).

Hope the longer answer helps

Not only will you need to increase the frequency with which you need to defrag your HD, it will increase the amount of time each defrag will take.

OK, so is it a good idea to partition the disk into several parts?. Will that save space that the FAT table occupies? are all the FAT tables for all partitions loaded all the time, or just for the partitions being acessed?
Is it still better to use several 32k cluster size partitons or just one partition for the whole disk?, or better to use smaller cluster size partitons?

Drive Size -------------- Cluster Size----Number of Sectors

4097MB to 8192MB (8GB)-------8KB------------16
8193MB to 16384MB(16GB)----16KB------------32
16385MB to 32768MB (32GB)--32KB------------64
greater than 32768MB (32GB)--64KB-----------128

You could divide it 8 16 16

Faster to defrag.

Sorry that I'm going on a tangent here, but from a logical standpoint it makes sense to partition your drive. The least you should do is make a seperate partition for your OS (Windows, whatever) and after that point you can divide it based on what type of things you'll be storing. For example I have partition for the OS, one for programs, one for video, one for audio (as both these tend to be large), and then another one that's a little more miscellaneous. The problem is estimating how much space you'll need for each one. If you suddenly fill one up and need some more space, you'll need to spill over into another partition. I think you should see the advantages/disadvantages fairly quickly if you think about it.