change hard drive cluster size

[Mike Brearley]

Is there anyway to change the cluster size on an existing partion without
losing data (re-formatting)? I have a Windows 2003 server (no groups have
been created for 2003 yet).

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I had mistakingly thought that a
smaller (16k) cluster size would give me better performance, but it's
killing it instead.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley (mike_brearley at hotmail dot com)

 

[Gerry Voras]

Do a backup, reformat with the appropriate parameters, and restore is going
to be ther prefered method.

Or, if you don't mind taking a chance, try using the command line "CONVERT"
utility to go from FAT16 or FAT32 to NTFS.

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

Mike,

One way is to backup the data, reformat using the lower cluster size and
then restore the data.

I believe that there are several 3rd party tools (Partition Magic, Partition
Manager) that will allow you to take an existing partition and change the
cluster size but we've notice some interesting "things" afterwards with some
of the data structures on the drive - that while technically legal could
never be that way if the drive was formatted with the desired cluster size.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Want to email me? Delete ntloader.

 

[Mike Brearley]

I stopped the services running on the drive, used NT backup. I then changed
my deleted my arrat from within the PAM (Promise Array Management) Utility,
re-created it using the default 64k stripe size, formatted using default 4k
cluster size and I'm still having issues.

I'm not thinking it's a hardware issue. Calling promise today when they
decide to wake up over there in CA

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley