I installed a 300GB USB drive formatted as NTFS. Disk management formatted
the drive using 32K cluster size. Is this the optimal size? Any MS KB
articles someone can refer me to?

Thanks!
Paul

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:56:01 -0500, "Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I installed a 300GB USB drive formatted as NTFS. Disk management formatted
>the drive using 32K cluster size. Is this the optimal size? Any MS KB
>articles someone can refer me to?
>
>Thanks!
>Paul
>
You should use 4096 byte allocation units (cluster) to allow compression and defragging.

Make sure that you are using the driver provided by the manufacturer
specifically for this drive. You may also want to disable write caching for
this drive as well.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Want to email me? Delete ntloader.

"Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> I installed a 300GB USB drive formatted as NTFS. Disk management
formatted
> the drive using 32K cluster size. Is this the optimal size? Any MS KB
> articles someone can refer me to?
>
> Thanks!
> Paul
>
>

Any particular reason why you're suggesting to disable write caching? I
actually have this drive installed in a USB 2.0 external drive enclosure and
am using it for offline backup.

Thanks!
Paul

"Greg Hayes/Raxco Software" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Make sure that you are using the driver provided by the manufacturer
> specifically for this drive. You may also want to disable write caching
> for
> this drive as well.
>
> - Greg/Raxco Software
> Microsoft MVP - Windows File System
>
> Want to email me? Delete ntloader.
>
> "Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
>> I installed a 300GB USB drive formatted as NTFS. Disk management
> formatted
>> the drive using 32K cluster size. Is this the optimal size? Any MS KB
>> articles someone can refer me to?
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Paul
>>
>>
>
>

A lot of the manufacturer's drivers don't implement write caching correctly
and in a high I/O rate environment, you can end up seeing a lot of bad
block/delayed write failure messages show up in the System event log - could
lead to possible corruption on the drive.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Want to email me? Delete ntloader.

"Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Any particular reason why you're suggesting to disable write caching? I
> actually have this drive installed in a USB 2.0 external drive enclosure
and
> am using it for offline backup.
>
> Thanks!
> Paul
>
> "Greg Hayes/Raxco Software" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> > Make sure that you are using the driver provided by the manufacturer
> > specifically for this drive. You may also want to disable write caching
> > for
> > this drive as well.
> >
> > - Greg/Raxco Software
> > Microsoft MVP - Windows File System
> >
> > Want to email me? Delete ntloader.
> >
> > "Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> > news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> >> I installed a 300GB USB drive formatted as NTFS. Disk management
> > formatted
> >> the drive using 32K cluster size. Is this the optimal size? Any MS KB
> >> articles someone can refer me to?
> >>
> >> Thanks!
> >> Paul
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>