Very quick cluster size question

[Jonty]

I've just bought a nice Maxtor 80 gig drive and intend to install it this weekend.

I know that when you format, the /Z:n switch can be used where n multiplied by 512 represents the cluster size in bytes, thereby overriding the usual cluster size that is imposed by the size of the partition.

My question is this - on disks greater than 32gig the cluster size is generally set to 32kb - is there any reason why I can't set the size higher than this?

Why I ask is that Maxtor recommend the use of their Maxblast3 partition and format utility rather than using fdisk and format. Has anyone used this utility and does it create clusters higher than 32kb on larger disks automatically, or is 32kb clusters OK for 80 gig or even larger drives?

I have a Windows book (a few years old now) that says the cluster size for drives between 260mb and 8gb should be 4kb, 8gb to 16gb should be 8kb, 16gb to 32gb should be 16kb and greater than 32gb should be 32kb. It stops there - is there a newer table to take into account todays much larger drives?

[skuz]

32 KB is the max. Unless there are only big files on the drive, you wouldn't want them bigger. The bigger the cluster, the higher the space waste.

A 1 KB file uses a whole 32 KB cluster.

[Jonty]

I've just set the drive up with fdisk and format. I chose a cluster size of 32kb and just one huge partition. I want to run it for a month to prove it works OK then repartition and make it the boot drive, with separate partitions for Windows, data etc.

[Chuckiechan]

I've used the utility too, If you don't you get an annoying 8 Mg little partition that shows up during (Win2K) install that is holding set up files and utilities from Fdisk and Format.

Regarding clusters, the smaller the better. I see no reason to change from default unless you have some compelling reason to do so. IMO

[Jonty]

Originally posted by Chuckiechan
Regarding clusters, the smaller the better

I agree, but on a large disk like 80gb with say 8kb clusters the FAT table would be huge?

I've only set 32kb clusters on this disk as a default really as I will be changing it after a month.

I'm running 98fe and I had the fdisk problem of not reporting the correct size of the disk above 64gb. I've just found out there is a fix for this here: http://support.microsoft.com/default...NoWebContent=1

This creates a new fdisk.exe file and will report the values correctly.