allocation unit size mean

_Kr4nG_ · 08-20-2006, 05:52 PM

i want to format my hdd that i store my movies on cause i burned all my movies already. anyway i was just curious what allocation unit size means.

BlackKoala · 08-20-2006, 06:19 PM

The Default Cluster Size for the NTFS and FAT File Systems

**WhiteBoy88** · 08-20-2006, 06:38 PM

In summary, the Allocation Size is the cluster size; yours is 4KB. It's the smallest amount of space the drive will allocate for a file. That means that if you save a 1KB text file, you've wasted 3KB of disk space. That should also help explain why files fragment, requiring you to defrag your HDD.

_Kr4nG_ · 08-20-2006, 11:39 PM

no its set up as 4069 bytes right now. should i format and set it as 512 bytes? this drive is only for movies.

Riddlinkidstoner · 08-20-2006, 11:50 PM

Wow I learn something new everyday. Hot damn i love Xoxide :)

_Kr4nG_ · 08-21-2006, 11:12 AM

what should i set the bytes too

BlackKoala · 08-21-2006, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kr4nG_

what should i set the bytes too

Leave it at what it is. Whitey explained it well.

**NortHWizarD** · 08-21-2006, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kr4nG_

no its set up as 4069 bytes right now. should i format and set it as 512 bytes? this drive is only for movies.

4096 *bytes* (not KILObytes)

Whiteboy88 said it was set a 4KB (*KILO*bytes) - see the difference?

4KB is the same as 4096 bytes.
or 32 kilobits
he could have also said 32,768 bits if he had wanted to :)

check this out if you ever want to decipher all that stuff... an online bit/byte etc. calculator

Bit Calculator - Convert between bits/bytes/kilobits/kilobytes/megabits/megabytes/gigabits/gigabytes.

and here is an explanation of them...

Kilobyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What are BYTES, Kilobytes, etc? How big are they and what do they mean?

~NortH~

**Grez** · 08-21-2006, 12:54 PM

Man, when I was in school (college), we had to learn all of this and understand/caculate potential seek/read times on a DASD array, given a specific sector/cluster size, number of cylinders, seek range, and data transfer rates. This was so when we were designing applications or databases, we could tool them to match the performance of the primary hardware upon which they would run. These days, it seems like they don't even teach this stuff any more.

But yeah, Whitey and North are right on the money. My advice is to leave it at the default value. Unless you have enough knowledge to understand the advantages of changing it, and you know that you're going to have a concentration of a certain type/size of data that justifies changing this to your advantage, the default is probably best. There's a reason that it's the default...it's already been determined that, for most people and the completely random variety of data types and sizes they're dealing with, a 4K allocation unit will give you the best overall performance/space usage ratio.

Blazin Trav · 08-21-2006, 06:03 PM

I always leave it at default. I never saw the point to messing with that setting.