default unit allocation size? What is Optimal?

[GLO]

So, there are a few options here.

What is the best option to use?

Thanks

[nolookingca]

harddrive? I think 8k or something.

[GLO]

Sorry, yes, im refering to Hard drive when formatting it.

[Clueless]

4k is supposed to be the best, as the intel (and presumably all i386's) handle data in "pages" of 4 kb. It's definitely better to have the page file on a partition with a 4k cluster size, as there would be extra read and write operations to convert to cluster size otherwise. I don't know if this applies to other files or not, but I'd imagine there would be some other benifits to 4k (which seems to be the default NTFS cluster size anyway).

[GLO]

Thanks Clueless,

I have opted for all partitions to be on the default setting at this time. but was just curious since it offers other options.

Thanks again

[enuffsaid]

If you were to select the 4096 bytes allocation size, and you would write a 1K file to the HDD, you would lose 3K of unused data for that unit.

If you were to select 1024 bytes as your allocation size, and again you would write the same 1K file, the allocation unit would be nicely filled, without any loss.

HOWEVER, if you were to write a 4K file with 1024 bytes alloc. size, you need 4 units. This creates more overhead and accessing times of the HDD.

With the current size of HDD's and considering most files are usually larger than 4K, the LARGEST option available would be best!