Increase my partitions' cluster size

[Foxbat]

For years, I had my Win 98SE main hard drive partitioned in the following scheme:

C: (OS) @ slightly < 8GB to take make use of 4KB clusters while allowing capacity leeway.

D: (programs, games) @ 30GB, 16KB clusters.

All other partitions (storage) @ 32KB clusters.

My thinking at the time when I created that partition scheme was to keep slack space down for the first two partitions. The D: partition ended up at 16KB clusters because I needed 30GB, but I kept it under 32GB so the clusters does not inflate to 32KB.

My annual routine format C: and reinstall maintenance is overdue, and with my current mindset no longer concerned with slack space, it might be a good time for a new partition scheme, perhaps slightly more performance oriented. One thing the old schemed bothered me is the C: partition. It was pushed to the brim right before the clusters hit 8KB, resulting in 2,094,388 4KB clusters and a large FAT that takes a little longer to maintain with Scandisk and Defrag. I am thinking about bringing it to slightly over 8GB so I get 8KB clusters for a slight performance increase. The same would be done for the D: partition as well, enlarging it to 32GB for 32KB clusters.

I briefly thought about creating a 1.5GB partition for swap, temp, and internet cache files. But this would mean having one non-flexible unusable partition, and even more drive letters assigned (it's up to M, and worse if I plug in a card reader). The C: partition usually stays at low fragmentation levels and the solid contiguous swap file rarely grows larger than my specified size of 256MB.

The general consensus are larger clusters give a slight performance increase for big files. I work with both small and large files, from tiny text docs to video, so no emphasis either way. This is splitting hairs. If I had not thought about changing my cluster paradigm, I would have had a fresh installation two months ago. What do you good folks think? Is my old partition scheme worth changing for a slight performance increase, or is that just voodoo dancing?

[TmEE]

I keep everything at 32KB, I deal with a lot of small files and having a bit of headroom for them to grow helps a lot with fragmentation issues aswell.