What Cluster Size?

[lazerman]

The next time I reformat I want to use the most performance oriented cluster size for my hdd as I can. This may be in a month or so, maybe less, all I want is as much performance as I can get. Will I get any performance gains from increasing the windows default cluster size from 4k to 8k? How high can I go is the question I need to be answered. I remember reading on here in a tutorial by larry that you can set your raid0'ed hdd at 16k cluster size because they are at that size as well. I may just be talking out my ass here, but I would sure like to know berfore my next reformat.

lol thanks nubius.

Also I am running WD Caviar Special Edition 120GB IDE hdd with 8mb buffer, using abit's serillel 2 which allows my IDE drive to run like a sata drive.

 

[Nubius]

Good question...hope someone can answer it properly

 

[killians45]

the higher the cluster size, the more wasted space.

 

[lazerman]

What do you mean?

 

[rememberme]

Sorry to dig up an old post (well 10 days old) but I'm bored and thought the thread needs answering...

Let's say you have a file system with 10KB clusters. If you were to make a Word document which ended up being 33KB, it would actually take up 40KB (which in this case is 4 clusters) because Windows will only deal in 10KB jumps.

33KB divided by 10KB = 3 Clusters with 3KB left over

The 3KB needs to be homed and as Windows will only work in 10KB clusters, we would have to use 10KB wasting 7 of them! Therefore it is much more efficient to use smaller clusters.

The down point is that with a smaller cluster size, you are going to end up with loads more clusters on the drive. This means a lot more time is needed to find the cluster you want when you search for it... It is a negotiation process based on speed and efficiency.

If you right click a file and select properties, you will see a 'Size' value which is the number of bytes the file data is and a 'Size on Disk' which is the number of bytes the file has taken up due to cluster allocations.

**and on a side note, you will might see in films people talking about ghost processes that have made themselves. This is supposidly because the excess bytes from wasted cluster space groups together and creates a command by accident**