preferable allocation size when formatiing HDD?

[Stratman69]

Hello forum

Now I want to format my 2 hard drives for storage. One is a 1TB dirve that I will only be using for Blu-Ray files and they are on average 25 to 50G large. The other is a 300G for games which run anywhere form 2 to 8G. Windows gives me an option to change the allocation size to the following sizes: 4096 or 8192 bytes; 16, 32 or 64 kilobytes. Knowing the size of the files I will be installing on the drives:

Would it be beneficial (speed of access, fragmentation, etc.) to use a larger allocation size for each one and if so, which size would you recommend for each?

Also, having used the drives already and knowing they are virus free, could I use the quick format, or should you always run the longer format for the health of the drive?

Thank for the advice!

 

[turbogtstang]

Quick format should be fine. If you are paranoid, spend the extra time and run the full and just walk away from it.

The smaller the file allocation size, the faster files will be transfered between disks. However they are also less efficient on space. So bigger= more real space, smaller = faster drive to drive transfer speeds. However in the end it all depends on what you are going to do and you will probably see very little benefit no matter which way you go.

That Said, I would do the 4096.