optimal cluster size?

[Guest]

good morning - i am running an xp home machine, with a 40 Gb boot drive, and
a 200Gb data drive. The data drive is partitioned with 512 byte clusters;
the boot drive with 4 Kb clusters. Would it be advisable to resize the boot
drive with 512 byte clusters? I am a photographer running, primarily,
PhotoShop CS, Illustrator CS, Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX. PhotoShop uses
the data drive as a scratch disk, often with files approaching 200 Mb, hence
the question about both compatibility and speed with regard to the disparity
of cluster sizes.

Any and all answers appreciated.

alan staats

 

[Jim Macklin]

You'd be better off with 4 KB cluster on both drives. Since
your data files are large, you are not really saving any
significant amount of space/ If you had a lot of small, 1
and 2 KB files, small cluster would save some wasted space,
but with bigger files you are just running a more work
intensive cluster size.


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.


in message
| good morning - i am running an xp home machine, with a 40
Gb boot drive, and
| a 200Gb data drive. The data drive is partitioned with
512 byte clusters;
| the boot drive with 4 Kb clusters. Would it be advisable
to resize the boot
| drive with 512 byte clusters? I am a photographer
running, primarily,
| PhotoShop CS, Illustrator CS, Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX.
PhotoShop uses
| the data drive as a scratch disk, often with files
approaching 200 Mb, hence
| the question about both compatibility and speed with
regard to the disparity
| of cluster sizes.
|
| Any and all answers appreciated.
|
| alan staats
| --
| photo:staats

 

[Guest]

....will a 4 Kb cluster size speed things up a bit? that, primarily, is what
i am looking for. i can buy more hard drives... time, on the other hand, is
irreplaceable.

alan staats

 

[RonK]

Have a look here :
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=4875&SearchString=ntfs&pg=1

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Sun, 5 Dec 2004 06:33:03 -0800, "photostaats"

good morning - i am running an xp home machine, with a 40 Gb boot drive, and
a 200Gb data drive. The data drive is partitioned with 512 byte clusters;
the boot drive with 4 Kb clusters. Would it be advisable to resize the boot
drive with 512 byte clusters?

No - you'd expect a significant slowdown.

4k is the best size for anything that may be paged to or from disk,
such as system code, as it's the CPU's natural paging size.

512-byte clusters mean huge numbers of clusters and fragmentation.