Night Owl Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Just over a week ago I realized my Sony notebook (that I got back in November) came with 1 KB cluster sizes. The usual default for NTFS is 4 KB. I thought it was really strange for Sony to sell a notebook like this when 4 KB seems to be regarded as the most efficient for general computing. I researched this and — short of reformatting my hard drive — I found that Paragon Partition Manager is able to resize cluster sizes.Should I bother changing my cluster size from 1 KB to 4 KB? I ordered Windows 7 Home Premium for half price this summer and I should get it very soon. Maybe I should just wipe my notebook clean when I install Windows 7 and format my hard drive then with 4 KB NTFS clusters?Will 1 KB vs. 4 KB cluster sizes make any noticeable difference in speed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Lite Posted October 20, 2009 Administrator Share Posted October 20, 2009 Larger cluster size = more data from disk can be read into memory at once.I don't know of any benchmarks regarding this though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizarre™ Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 The smaller the cluster size, the more efficiently your disk stores information.A cluster is the smallest logical amount of disk space that can be allocated to hold a file. Storing small files on a filesystem with large clusters will therefore waste disk space; such wasted disk space is called slack space.@Night Owl:It has its advantages and disadvantages, so I suggest you continue reading yourself ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shought Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Likes this:You have a 500GB HD but don't even come close to filling half, set a bigger cluster size.You have a 100GB HD and you've got trouble downloading an .mp3 'Low Disk Space' error, set a lower cluster size :P (I believe it's not possible to change this after the OS is installed, or is it?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myidisbb Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 The smaller the cluster size, the more efficiently your disk stores information.A cluster is the smallest logical amount of disk space that can be allocated to hold a file. Storing small files on a filesystem with large clusters will therefore waste disk space; such wasted disk space is called slack space.@Night Owl:It has its advantages and disadvantages, so I suggest you continue reading yourself ;)another adv would be that certain worms/virus (what ever they want to call them now days) can hid in the empty parts of a cluster that wasnt fully filled. i remember thareadding about that one a few years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeetPirate Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 1KB cluster size is suicide on large drives. The smaller the cluster the larger the MFT will get, it will have to record an address location for every 1KB cluster on the HDD. 4KB is a decent tradeoff for great performance without overkilling the MFT. If you use 1KB cluster it will appear to work faster but just wait, the more the drive gets filled up the slower the performance because the MFT itself will get really large and you will have to defrag it often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myidisbb Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 1KB cluster size is suicide on large drives. The smaller the cluster the larger the MFT will get, it will have to record an address location for every 1KB cluster on the HDD. 4KB is a decent tradeoff for great performance without overkilling the MFT. If you use 1KB cluster it will appear to work faster but just wait, the more the drive gets filled up the slower the performance because the MFT itself will get really large and you will have to defrag it often.i remember backin 94-95 we had a guy at work that used the same 3.5 disk (thats 1.44MB for you kiddies) after some time he had used up the fat16 ( i think it was fat16 on a disk) for that disk. unable to access stuff afterwards.sony always likes to do their own thing that usually not user friendly. i think some 3rd party software wil let you change your cluster size to 4 so you dont lost anything. they might have it frontpage already. not sure Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Owl Posted October 21, 2009 Author Share Posted October 21, 2009 I don't know of any benchmarks regarding this though.I haven't seen any benchmarks for general computing either.@Night Owl:It has its advantages and disadvantages, so I suggest you continue reading yourself ;)Yes, I'll keep researching.(I believe it's not possible to change this after the OS is installed, or is it?)And @myidisbb:Yes, it is possible. As I mentioned, Paragon Partition Manager can resize cluster sizes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Owl Posted October 21, 2009 Author Share Posted October 21, 2009 1KB cluster size is suicide on large drives. The smaller the cluster the larger the MFT will get, it will have to record an address location for every 1KB cluster on the HDD. 4KB is a decent tradeoff for great performance without overkilling the MFT. If you use 1KB cluster it will appear to work faster but just wait, the more the drive gets filled up the slower the performance because the MFT itself will get really large and you will have to defrag it often.I have a 320 GB HDD and it is usually pretty full. I never expected Sony to use only a 1 KB cluster size so I didn't check it before. Bad Sony. Grrr. :angry: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator DKT27 Posted October 21, 2009 Administrator Share Posted October 21, 2009 The question here, is it safe to change your cluster size? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeetPirate Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 The question here, is it safe to change your cluster size?Sure it's safe. I doubt Paragon would put all that effort into adding the feature in Partition Magic just for it to screw somebody over and they all laugh after. It will work and it is safe, I believe you need a certain amount of free space before you can do it though. Might want to take a read of the manual or check some forums online for a guide. Since the days of MS-DOS and RedHat 6 I have been using partition magic, it has not failed me as yet. Paragon has proven the test of time for me and I trust them.Corrected in lower post, not Paragon, PowerQuest Partition Magic is what I was referring to. ^_^ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator DKT27 Posted October 21, 2009 Administrator Share Posted October 21, 2009 Thanx for the info.For partition magic, just a few days ago, my friend's HDD's partition table got corrupted or similar. And partition magic gave him some weird error, I checked the Norton site to get more info about the error, the website had some meanin less answer to it(the error no.). And atlast I advised my friend to use TestDisk, I came to know about it from wiki, after that he was able to successfully recover his data. And I still dont have any idea about, what the hell is partition table? :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Owl Posted October 21, 2009 Author Share Posted October 21, 2009 Sure it's safe. I doubt Paragon would put all that effort into adding the feature in Partition Magic just for it to screw somebody over and they all laugh after. It will work and it is safe, I believe you need a certain amount of free space before you can do it though. Might want to take a read of the manual or check some forums online for a guide. Since the days of MS-DOS and RedHat 6 I have been using partition magic, it has not failed me as yet. Paragon has proven the test of time for me and I trust them.Do you mean Symantec Partition Magic (which is no longer developed) or Paragon Partition Manager? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Owl Posted December 15, 2009 Author Share Posted December 15, 2009 Oh, this is no longer an issue. When I clean (custom) installed Windows 7 64-bit the other weekend, the Windows 7 installer thankfully reformatted my drive with 4 KB clusters. (There was no option in the Windows 7 installer to specify this.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizarre™ Posted December 15, 2009 Share Posted December 15, 2009 Do you mean Symantec Partition Magic (which is no longer developed) or Paragon Partition Manager?Partition Magic truly belong to PowerQuest. All Symantec did was acquire and kill a great program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Owl Posted December 15, 2009 Author Share Posted December 15, 2009 Do you mean Symantec Partition Magic (which is no longer developed) or Paragon Partition Manager?Partition Magic truly belong to PowerQuest. All Symantec did was acquire and kill a great program.It's just that LeetPirate talked about Paragon Partition Magic which does not exist. So I didn't know if he was talking about (PowerQuest / Symantec) Partition Magic or Paragon Partition Manager. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeetPirate Posted December 15, 2009 Share Posted December 15, 2009 Do you mean Symantec Partition Magic (which is no longer developed) or Paragon Partition Manager?Partition Magic truly belong to PowerQuest. All Symantec did was acquire and kill a great program.It's just that LeetPirate talked about Paragon Partition Magic which does not exist. So I didn't know if he was talking about (PowerQuest / Symantec) Partition Magic or Paragon Partition Manager.It was my mistake, sorry. I forgot the name but now I remember it was PowerQuest Partition Magic 4.0 that I used to use long ago. It fit on a floppy and did a great job. I have not needed it in many many years so I mixed up the names when you guys were talking about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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