Just got my new Samsung 160 GB hard drive....
When formatting it it asks for the 'Allocation Unit Size'
What should i set it at?
Thanx in advance!
Applecrusher
Just got my new Samsung 160 GB hard drive....
When formatting it it asks for the 'Allocation Unit Size'
What should i set it at?
Thanx in advance!
Applecrusher
I'd say, the smaller the better.
If "Allocation Unit Size" is the same thing as "Cluster Size" (And I'm assuming it is), then the smaller those clusters, the smaller the waste when a file occupies a cluster partially (Seeing as a single cluster cannot be allocated to more than one file).
If I recall correctly, under FAT32, having more (smaller) clusters meant having a larger File Allocation Table, which meant more space used, either way. In that case, the question you had to ask is, "On average, how big are my files - small or large?" and based on that, opt to use smaller or larger cluster sizes.
However, NTFS, as I understand, removes this limitation, so the choice is obvious. How the size will affect drive speeds is another matter, but with my Sammies doing 55MB/s on average, I'm not much worried.
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