Re: MCE2005 Storage Drive Cluster Size ?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Stephan Schaem (sschaem_at_seriousmagic.com)
Date: 02/12/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 19:54:01 -0800

The other way to look at it is that in average each file waist half a sector size.
So 100,000 files on the HD with 512 byte sectors = 50meg wasted
with 4K byte sectors = 400meg wasted.

note: It doesn't matter the size of the file.

You also see this measurement when you do a property on a folder:
actual size VS disk size.

Stephan

"Doug Frisk" <PublicNews@removeme.fazwak.com> wrote in message news:OehpuILEFHA.2180@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> "MartinW" <MartinW@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:232816D7-5655-4B80-90D5-6F60445FDD7F@microsoft.com...
>> In pursuit of improving my MCX wireless performance, I have been examining my
>> upgraded MCE2005 PC set-up using a diagnostic utility that I download via
>> TheGreenButton community.
>>
>> Everything passes MCE2005 diagnostics except one thing: the "Storage Drive
>> Cluster Size" required for MCE2005 is supposed to be 4,096B, but my PC is
>> only 512B. So my PC "failed" the test.
>>
>> I am an not a technically proficient user (...know enough to be dangerous!).
>>
>> Can anyone educate me regarding this "failure"? Should I worry about it? Can
>> it be fixed?
>>
>> Generally my MCE PC and MCX work fine, except for an irritating occaisional
>> "stuttering-fit" that my wireless MCX experiences with Live TV.
>>
>> thank for any feedback,
>> MartinW
>
> The cluster size is the smallest amount of space that you can allocate for a file. The default for any NTFS volume greater than
> about 100 megabytes (no, I meant meg not gig) is 4 kilobytes.
>
> Your OEM must have intentionally formatted the drive with 512 byte clusters. This is optimal for systems that store *a lot* of
> very small files. An example would be the server that is hosting this news group. Each message is stored as a discrete file and
> most of them are less than 1K in size. If the disk were using 4K clusters every single post would take up 4K on the disk even if
> it only said "me too".
>
> A larger cluster size is good for very large files, particularly very large files that are read sequentially. Oh, files like
> video files you'd record or play in MCE. :-)
>
> The down side to having a larger than 4K cluster size is that you cannot enable NTFS compression if the cluster size is over 4K.
>
> To your questions.
>
> Should you worry about it? No. You might want to schedule a disk defrag more regularly than you otherwise might. A down side to
> a small cluster size is that files tend to fragment faster and more severely.
>
> Can you do anything about it? No. Not with the base tools that come with the OS. Essentially you need to start completely over,
> reformat the drive and reinstall the OS. There are some third party products that can change the cluster size on the fly.
> Partition Magic ( http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/features.html ) is the first one that comes to mind. But since you'll
> have no real performance impact, as long as you keep the drive defragmented, I wouldn't bother spending money.
>

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