Cluster size ? - experience

[- Bobb -]

I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition them, also
thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size. This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for disk IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check properties, I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger folders there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or previous pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that " average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in formatting and I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not waste so much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files / obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb clusters. I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to start a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large clusters - was it
worth it ? Less waste ?

 

[Rock]

I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition them, also
thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size. This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for disk IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check properties, I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger folders there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or previous pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that " average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in formatting and I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not waste so much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files / obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb clusters. I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to start a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large clusters - was it
worth it ? Less waste ?

I don't have experience with 2kb vs 4kb clusters but 72MB on a 236GB drive
is .03% of the drive. What significant gain do you hope to achieve?

 

[Rock]

I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition them, also
thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size. This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for disk IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check properties, I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger folders there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or previous pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that " average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in formatting and I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not waste so much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files / obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb clusters. I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to start a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large clusters - was it
worth it ? Less waste ?

To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive space, that 72MB
is costing about 2 cents.

 

[LVTravel]

To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive space, that
72MB is costing about 2 cents.

And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size, the size of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically when it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.

 

[- Bobb -]

What significant gain do you hope to achieve?

Wasting 1/8 the space on smaller files. The drive has about 130,000 files
and if half of them are small files, then I'd be wasting 65000 * 4k per
cluster or 65000 * 256 per cluster.
It was a yes or no question: I guess your answer is no - thanks

 

[Poprivet]

I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition them,
also thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size. This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for disk IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm
watching not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check
properties, I can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of
larger folders there too, but some of the older folders are copies of
old CDs or previous pc folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in
there - bringing that " average" down to 1mb. I just made a few
partititons and on a 235 gb partition - with 4kb clusters (default),
it's already used 72mb in formatting and I haven't "wasted" space
with any of my stuff yet. So to not waste so much space on the new
drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of making a portion
formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files / obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb clusters.
I've been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to
start a fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large clusters - was
it worth it ? Less waste ?

No, IMO it's not worth it. There are so many trade-offs that you might
actually lose some space with 2k clusters, or at least not gain as much as
it seems like you would. In any case it's going to make such an
imperceptibly small difference that you'll be hard pressed to quantify it.

Try reading about it in wikipedia; good writeup there.

HTH
Pop`

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size, the size of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically when it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.

If I understand correctly what you're saying, no, you have it
backwards. The smaller the cluster size, the less space is used.

That's because, on the average, every file wastes roughly half of its
last cluster. So the total waste is roughly the number of files
multiplied by half the cluster size.

But having a non-standard cluster size is generally not a good thing
to do. A smaller cluster size hurts performance because more clusters
have to be read. And as Rock points out, the disk space savings are
trivial.

Back in the DOS/Windows 3.x days, when drives were small and
expensive, people used to partition their drives into many pieces, not
for organizational reasons, but because smaller partitions resulted in
smaller cluster size. They would therefore waste less of their
precious small hard drive space. Today, with our large cheap drives,
it makes no sense to do this, or to use smaller clusters.

 

[frodo]

XP's NTFS subsystem is optimized to use 4K clusters, especially with
regard to the system cache; if you force another size you will loose a lot
performance-wise - don't do it. goog-hoo around, it's out there...

 

[LVTravel]

Ken, I do remember the day when I bought a 245 MB Maxtor drive for $400 and
it had multiple partitions for the very purpose you stated.

The system allocation space in NTFS (what in Fat file system is called The
FAT) will grow whenever you reduce the cluster size because it needs to have
the physical real estate reserved to keep track of all the cluster
information.

Granted that the storage area itself will have more physical clusters and
less area used by each individual file but the Reserved System Space (his
original "72 MB in formatting") will grow. I have checked this area a
couple of times by formatting a few new drives of different sizes with 2K
clusters, running Executive Software's Diskeeper (and some other programs)
to see the system reserve size (allocation space) and then reformatting with
the default 4k clusters. The system reserve size was almost half the size
with 4k clusters than with 2k clusters.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ken, I do remember the day when I bought a 245 MB Maxtor drive for $400 and
it had multiple partitions for the very purpose you stated.

The system allocation space in NTFS (what in Fat file system is called The
FAT) will grow whenever you reduce the cluster size because it needs to have
the physical real estate reserved to keep track of all the cluster
information.

Granted that the storage area itself will have more physical clusters and
less area used by each individual file but the Reserved System Space (his
original "72 MB in formatting") will grow. I have checked this area a
couple of times by formatting a few new drives of different sizes with 2K
clusters, running Executive Software's Diskeeper (and some other programs)
to see the system reserve size (allocation space) and then reformatting with
the default 4k clusters. The system reserve size was almost half the size
with 4k clusters than with 2k clusters.

Thanks for the info. I'm not familiar with this. I've googled around,
and came up with this article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619,
but it seems to refer only to NT4 and Windows 2000 Server, and not to
XP. Do you have any other links you can point me to with more info
about this?

I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition them,
also thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size. This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for disk IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm
watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check properties,
I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger folders
there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or previous
pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that "
average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb
partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in formatting and
I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not waste so
much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files /
obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb clusters. I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to start a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large clusters - was
it
worth it ? Less waste ?



To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive space, that
72MB is costing about 2 cents.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]


And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size, the size
of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically when
it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.

If I understand correctly what you're saying, no, you have it
backwards. The smaller the cluster size, the less space is used.

That's because, on the average, every file wastes roughly half of its
last cluster. So the total waste is roughly the number of files
multiplied by half the cluster size.

But having a non-standard cluster size is generally not a good thing
to do. A smaller cluster size hurts performance because more clusters
have to be read. And as Rock points out, the disk space savings are
trivial.

Back in the DOS/Windows 3.x days, when drives were small and
expensive, people used to partition their drives into many pieces, not
for organizational reasons, but because smaller partitions resulted in
smaller cluster size. They would therefore waste less of their
precious small hard drive space. Today, with our large cheap drives,
it makes no sense to do this, or to use smaller clusters.

 

[- Bobb -]

Thanks for the practical insight guys,.

To update the original message: I downloaded and ran latest Seagate disc
utilities , resized the new drive partititions and then copied original
data to new drive. ( so used 4k clusters) When I check the archive
partition on the new , it 'wastes 350mb' of that 234gb partition ( 'total
data size' vs 'actual size on logical disk').
Thanks again.

As for MFT fragmentation ....
This MFT = 3 fragments and 99% in use.
I read:
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_optimization.htm
and the KB pointers from there - any advice related to MFT ?

Here's that partition currently:
Disk Defragmenter

Volume size = 234 GB

Cluster size = 4 KB

File fragmentation

Total files = 127,640

Average file size = 1 MB

Total fragmented files = 31

Total excess fragments = 180

Average fragments per file = 1.00

Folder fragmentation

Total folders = 8,060

Fragmented folders = 9

Excess folder fragments = 12

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation

Total MFT size = 133 MB

MFT record count = 135,725

Percent MFT in use = 99 %

Total MFT fragments = 3

 

[LVTravel]

Ken, I can't find any documentation to show what happened on my system. All
the documentation I can find says that the MFT and other system reserved
space is set at approximately 12% (IIRC) of the volume size at format and
will stretch as files are added that consume the MFT space.

So, according to the documentation, what showed on my system should not have
happened and the MFT and System reserved space should have been the same
size on a newly formatted drive no matter what the cluster size. Apparently
I was wrong on my original statements, but the testing I did indicated that
I was correct but the documentation didn't support what happened.

Stranger things have happened.

Ken, I do remember the day when I bought a 245 MB Maxtor drive for $400
and
it had multiple partitions for the very purpose you stated.

The system allocation space in NTFS (what in Fat file system is called
The
FAT) will grow whenever you reduce the cluster size because it needs to
have
the physical real estate reserved to keep track of all the cluster
information.

Granted that the storage area itself will have more physical clusters and
less area used by each individual file but the Reserved System Space
(his
original "72 MB in formatting") will grow. I have checked this area a
couple of times by formatting a few new drives of different sizes with 2K
clusters, running Executive Software's Diskeeper (and some other
programs)
to see the system reserve size (allocation space) and then reformatting
with
the default 4k clusters. The system reserve size was almost half the size
with 4k clusters than with 2k clusters.

Thanks for the info. I'm not familiar with this. I've googled around,
and came up with this article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619,
but it seems to refer only to NT4 and Windows 2000 Server, and not to
XP. Do you have any other links you can point me to with more info
about this?

I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition
them,
also thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size.
This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for disk
IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm
watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check
properties,
I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger folders
there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or
previous
pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that "
average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb
partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in formatting
and
I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not waste
so
much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of
making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files /
obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb clusters.
I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to start
a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large clusters -
was
it
worth it ? Less waste ?



To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive space,
that
72MB is costing about 2 cents.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]


And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size, the
size
of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically
when
it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.


If I understand correctly what you're saying, no, you have it
backwards. The smaller the cluster size, the less space is used.

That's because, on the average, every file wastes roughly half of its
last cluster. So the total waste is roughly the number of files
multiplied by half the cluster size.

But having a non-standard cluster size is generally not a good thing
to do. A smaller cluster size hurts performance because more clusters
have to be read. And as Rock points out, the disk space savings are
trivial.

Back in the DOS/Windows 3.x days, when drives were small and
expensive, people used to partition their drives into many pieces, not
for organizational reasons, but because smaller partitions resulted in
smaller cluster size. They would therefore waste less of their
precious small hard drive space. Today, with our large cheap drives,
it makes no sense to do this, or to use smaller clusters.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ken, I can't find any documentation to show what happened on my system. All
the documentation I can find says that the MFT and other system reserved
space is set at approximately 12% (IIRC) of the volume size at format and
will stretch as files are added that consume the MFT space.

So, according to the documentation, what showed on my system should not have
happened and the MFT and System reserved space should have been the same
size on a newly formatted drive no matter what the cluster size. Apparently
I was wrong on my original statements, but the testing I did indicated that
I was correct but the documentation didn't support what happened.

Stranger things have happened.

OK, thanks for looking. If you should ever run into more info on this,
ping me here. I'd like to read it.

Ken, I do remember the day when I bought a 245 MB Maxtor drive for $400
and
it had multiple partitions for the very purpose you stated.

The system allocation space in NTFS (what in Fat file system is called
The
FAT) will grow whenever you reduce the cluster size because it needs to
have
the physical real estate reserved to keep track of all the cluster
information.

Granted that the storage area itself will have more physical clusters and
less area used by each individual file but the Reserved System Space
(his
original "72 MB in formatting") will grow. I have checked this area a
couple of times by formatting a few new drives of different sizes with 2K
clusters, running Executive Software's Diskeeper (and some other
programs)
to see the system reserve size (allocation space) and then reformatting
with
the default 4k clusters. The system reserve size was almost half the size
with 4k clusters than with 2k clusters.

Thanks for the info. I'm not familiar with this. I've googled around,
and came up with this article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619,
but it seems to refer only to NT4 and Windows 2000 Server, and not to
XP. Do you have any other links you can point me to with more info
about this?

I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition
them,
also thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size.
This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for disk
IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm
watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check
properties,
I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger folders
there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or
previous
pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that "
average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb
partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in formatting
and
I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not waste
so
much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of
making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files /
obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb clusters.
I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to start
a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large clusters -
was
it
worth it ? Less waste ?



To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive space,
that
72MB is costing about 2 cents.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]


And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size, the
size
of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically
when
it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.


If I understand correctly what you're saying, no, you have it
backwards. The smaller the cluster size, the less space is used.

That's because, on the average, every file wastes roughly half of its
last cluster. So the total waste is roughly the number of files
multiplied by half the cluster size.

But having a non-standard cluster size is generally not a good thing
to do. A smaller cluster size hurts performance because more clusters
have to be read. And as Rock points out, the disk space savings are
trivial.

Back in the DOS/Windows 3.x days, when drives were small and
expensive, people used to partition their drives into many pieces, not
for organizational reasons, but because smaller partitions resulted in
smaller cluster size. They would therefore waste less of their
precious small hard drive space. Today, with our large cheap drives,
it makes no sense to do this, or to use smaller clusters.

 

[LVTravel]

Absolutely.

Ken, I can't find any documentation to show what happened on my system.
All
the documentation I can find says that the MFT and other system reserved
space is set at approximately 12% (IIRC) of the volume size at format and
will stretch as files are added that consume the MFT space.

So, according to the documentation, what showed on my system should not
have
happened and the MFT and System reserved space should have been the same
size on a newly formatted drive no matter what the cluster size.
Apparently
I was wrong on my original statements, but the testing I did indicated
that
I was correct but the documentation didn't support what happened.

Stranger things have happened.

OK, thanks for looking. If you should ever run into more info on this,
ping me here. I'd like to read it.

Ken, I do remember the day when I bought a 245 MB Maxtor drive for
$400
and
it had multiple partitions for the very purpose you stated.

The system allocation space in NTFS (what in Fat file system is called
The
FAT) will grow whenever you reduce the cluster size because it needs
to
have
the physical real estate reserved to keep track of all the cluster
information.

Granted that the storage area itself will have more physical clusters
and
less area used by each individual file but the Reserved System Space
(his
original "72 MB in formatting") will grow. I have checked this area a
couple of times by formatting a few new drives of different sizes with
2K
clusters, running Executive Software's Diskeeper (and some other
programs)
to see the system reserve size (allocation space) and then
reformatting
with
the default 4k clusters. The system reserve size was almost half the
size
with 4k clusters than with 2k clusters.


Thanks for the info. I'm not familiar with this. I've googled around,
and came up with this article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619,
but it seems to refer only to NT4 and Windows 2000 Server, and not to
XP. Do you have any other links you can point me to with more info
about this?


I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition
them,
also thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size.
This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for
disk
IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm
watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check
properties,
I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger
folders
there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or
previous
pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that "
average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb
partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in
formatting
and
I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not
waste
so
much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of
making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files /
obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb
clusters.
I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to
start
a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large
clusters -
was
it
worth it ? Less waste ?



To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive
space,
that
72MB is costing about 2 cents.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]


And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size,
the
size
of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically
when
it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.


If I understand correctly what you're saying, no, you have it
backwards. The smaller the cluster size, the less space is used.

That's because, on the average, every file wastes roughly half of
its
last cluster. So the total waste is roughly the number of files
multiplied by half the cluster size.

But having a non-standard cluster size is generally not a good thing
to do. A smaller cluster size hurts performance because more
clusters
have to be read. And as Rock points out, the disk space savings are
trivial.

Back in the DOS/Windows 3.x days, when drives were small and
expensive, people used to partition their drives into many pieces,
not
for organizational reasons, but because smaller partitions resulted
in
smaller cluster size. They would therefore waste less of their
precious small hard drive space. Today, with our large cheap drives,
it makes no sense to do this, or to use smaller clusters.

 

[Bob I]

You say that the MFT with 4k clusters was only 1/2 the size of the MFT
space assigned when 2k clusters was used? What parameter (1-4 ?) for
NtfsMftZoneReservation was used in each case?

Absolutely.

Ken, I can't find any documentation to show what happened on my system.
All
the documentation I can find says that the MFT and other system reserved
space is set at approximately 12% (IIRC) of the volume size at format and
will stretch as files are added that consume the MFT space.

So, according to the documentation, what showed on my system should not
have
happened and the MFT and System reserved space should have been the same
size on a newly formatted drive no matter what the cluster size.
Apparently
I was wrong on my original statements, but the testing I did indicated
that
I was correct but the documentation didn't support what happened.

Stranger things have happened.

OK, thanks for looking. If you should ever run into more info on this,
ping me here. I'd like to read it.

Ken, I do remember the day when I bought a 245 MB Maxtor drive for
$400
and
it had multiple partitions for the very purpose you stated.

The system allocation space in NTFS (what in Fat file system is called
The
FAT) will grow whenever you reduce the cluster size because it needs
to
have
the physical real estate reserved to keep track of all the cluster
information.

Granted that the storage area itself will have more physical clusters
and
less area used by each individual file but the Reserved System Space
(his
original "72 MB in formatting") will grow. I have checked this area a
couple of times by formatting a few new drives of different sizes with
2K
clusters, running Executive Software's Diskeeper (and some other
programs)
to see the system reserve size (allocation space) and then
reformatting
with
the default 4k clusters. The system reserve size was almost half the
size
with 4k clusters than with 2k clusters.


Thanks for the info. I'm not familiar with this. I've googled around,
and came up with this article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619,
but it seems to refer only to NT4 and Windows 2000 Server, and not to
XP. Do you have any other links you can point me to with more info
about this?





I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition
them,
also thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size.
This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for
disk
IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm
watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check
properties,
I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger
folders
there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or
previous
pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that "
average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb
partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in
formatting
and
I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not
waste
so
much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of
making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files /
obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb
clusters.
I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to
start
a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large
clusters -
was
it
worth it ? Less waste ?



To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive
space,
that
72MB is costing about 2 cents.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]


And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size,
the
size
of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically
when
it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.


If I understand correctly what you're saying, no, you have it
backwards. The smaller the cluster size, the less space is used.

That's because, on the average, every file wastes roughly half of
its
last cluster. So the total waste is roughly the number of files
multiplied by half the cluster size.

But having a non-standard cluster size is generally not a good thing
to do. A smaller cluster size hurts performance because more
clusters
have to be read. And as Rock points out, the disk space savings are
trivial.

Back in the DOS/Windows 3.x days, when drives were small and
expensive, people used to partition their drives into many pieces,
not
for organizational reasons, but because smaller partitions resulted
in
smaller cluster size. They would therefore waste less of their
precious small hard drive space. Today, with our large cheap drives,
it makes no sense to do this, or to use smaller clusters.

 

[- Bobb -]

Sorry - no clue. I set it up last month.
After the feedback, I went with 4k clusters and just ghosted the old
drive.

You say that the MFT with 4k clusters was only 1/2 the size of the MFT
space assigned when 2k clusters was used? What parameter (1-4 ?) for
NtfsMftZoneReservation was used in each case?

Absolutely.

Ken, I can't find any documentation to show what happened on my
system. All
the documentation I can find says that the MFT and other system
reserved
space is set at approximately 12% (IIRC) of the volume size at format
and
will stretch as files are added that consume the MFT space.

So, according to the documentation, what showed on my system should
not have
happened and the MFT and System reserved space should have been the
same
size on a newly formatted drive no matter what the cluster size.
Apparently
I was wrong on my original statements, but the testing I did indicated
that
I was correct but the documentation didn't support what happened.

Stranger things have happened.


OK, thanks for looking. If you should ever run into more info on this,
ping me here. I'd like to read it.





Ken, I do remember the day when I bought a 245 MB Maxtor drive for
$400
and
it had multiple partitions for the very purpose you stated.

The system allocation space in NTFS (what in Fat file system is
called
The
FAT) will grow whenever you reduce the cluster size because it needs
to
have
the physical real estate reserved to keep track of all the cluster
information.

Granted that the storage area itself will have more physical
clusters and
less area used by each individual file but the Reserved System
Space
(his
original "72 MB in formatting") will grow. I have checked this area
a
couple of times by formatting a few new drives of different sizes
with 2K
clusters, running Executive Software's Diskeeper (and some other
programs)
to see the system reserve size (allocation space) and then
reformatting
with
the default 4k clusters. The system reserve size was almost half the
size
with 4k clusters than with 2k clusters.


Thanks for the info. I'm not familiar with this. I've googled around,
and came up with this article,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619,
but it seems to refer only to NT4 and Windows 2000 Server, and not to
XP. Do you have any other links you can point me to with more info
about this?





I've got a few new disks and while debating on how to partition
them,
also thinking of arranging my old " Archive partition" by size.
This
partitioned area is only for a library - not used normally for
disk
IO
during normal system operation, so it's utilization of space I'm
watching
not disk IO speed. It's about 175gb now and when I check
properties,
I
can see avg filesize is only 1mb. I do have a lot of larger
folders
there
too, but some of the older folders are copies of old CDs or
previous
pc
folders that have a lot of 1 kb files in there - bringing that "
average"
down to 1mb. I just made a few partititons and on a 235 gb
partition -
with 4kb clusters (default), it's already used 72mb in
formatting
and
I
haven't "wasted" space with any of my stuff yet. So to not
waste
so
much
space on the new drives for old/small stuff, I'm thinking of
making a
portion formatted as 2kb sectors and then for the large files /
obvious
backups etc ( 10mb/ 20 mb+ ? files) using ... say 64kb
clusters.
I've
been reading similiar questions via google, and don't want to
start
a
fight about what's "best",
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18335.html
just asking for others that set it up with small/large
clusters -
was
it
worth it ? Less waste ?



To add to the other post, at the current cost of hard drive
space,
that
72MB is costing about 2 cents.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]


And correct me someone if I am wrong but with a 2K cluster size,
the
size
of
the System area (the 72 MB now showing) will increase dramatically
when
it
doubles the amount of clusters (4K to 2K) to store that cluster
information.


If I understand correctly what you're saying, no, you have it
backwards. The smaller the cluster size, the less space is used.

That's because, on the average, every file wastes roughly half of
its
last cluster. So the total waste is roughly the number of files
multiplied by half the cluster size.

But having a non-standard cluster size is generally not a good
thing
to do. A smaller cluster size hurts performance because more
clusters
have to be read. And as Rock points out, the disk space savings are
trivial.

Back in the DOS/Windows 3.x days, when drives were small and
expensive, people used to partition their drives into many pieces,
not
for organizational reasons, but because smaller partitions resulted
in
smaller cluster size. They would therefore waste less of their
precious small hard drive space. Today, with our large cheap
drives,
it makes no sense to do this, or to use smaller clusters.