any risk to use cluster size smaller than windows default?

[Law]

just get a new 120GB HD , cut it into 3 partitions : 24GB 43.4GB 43.9GB.

for the C: 24GB the cluster size is 16KB and because there are a lot of
small to medium sizes file on it , so when i use partition magic to
check waste space . there are more than 900 + MB waste space .

so i use partition magic change the cluster size to 4kb and cut down
the waste space by 3/4.

my question is for long term and suitable usage will change the default
cluster size from 16kb to 4kb cause any trouble in the future ?

any suggestion ?

thx

PS the HD is running Win98SE on FAT32

 

[Eric Gisin]

Win 98/ME disk utilities are 16-bit and cannot work with FATs over 16MB (4M
clusters).

For a 24GB volume, we get (cluster size - clusters): 4K - 6M, 8K - 3M, 16K -
1.5M.

So you can cut the default cluster size in half for volumes formatted under
98/ME, but not 2K/XP.

I take it C is the OS, why not make it 16GB?

 

[John]

just get a new 120GB HD , cut it into 3 partitions : 24GB 43.4GB 43.9GB.

for the C: 24GB the cluster size is 16KB and because there are a lot of
small to medium sizes file on it , so when i use partition magic to
check waste space . there are more than 900 + MB waste space .

so i use partition magic change the cluster size to 4kb and cut down
the waste space by 3/4.

my question is for long term and suitable usage will change the default
cluster size from 16kb to 4kb cause any trouble in the future ?

any suggestion ?

thx

PS the HD is running Win98SE on FAT32

No, changing to 4K cluster size will cause no trouble.
Obviously, the drive will be a little slower than with 16K clusters.
You basically traded speed for size efficiency.
As long as that's what you want, then 4K is a good choice.


John