win2k pro/defragmenter won't run/8 KB per cluster

[Rabbithead]

Hello

I tried to run Disk Defragmenter last night for the first time in Windows 2000 Professional and had a problem. It ran okay on C: where the OS is installed, which is a Maxtor 30 GB hard drive (2.92 GB partition). But it wouldn't run on any of the partitions on my Maxtor 40 GB hard drive (approx 6.35 GB partitions) where the programs are installed. The error it reported was the following:

The volume MX40_13_2K (H:) has 8 KB per cluster. Disk Defragmenter cannot defragment NTFS drives with more than 4 KB per cluster.

I'm not sure how this happened. How can I fix this problem so I can defragment those partitions? Thanks in advance for your help in this matter.

[Rabbithead]

I downloaded Diskeeper v7.0 but it produced the same error message. Also, I tried running chkdsk /f on the volume but it still wouldn't defrag. Then I sent a help request to the tech team at Diskeeper (techweb@executive.com) and they replied with the following message:

I have an NTFS partition with a cluster size larger than 4K. Why won't

Diskeeper work?

------------------------

NTFS does not fully support cluster sizes larger than 4K. You can see this by

trying to set your cluster size higher than that in the Disk Administrator GUI

if you are using Windows NT 4.0. Diskeeper uses the defrag API of Windows NT

4.0 and Windows 2000 which does not support a cluster size of over 4k, thus we

are bound to follow those constraints. You will also not have use of the

Recycle bin or file compression with a cluster size larger than 4k.

This 4k cluster size limitation has been increased to 64k in Windows XP.

So now I'm hoping to find some shareware that will allow me to alter the cluster size without reformatting. I have one lead but that capability isn't enabled in the trialware so it doesn't deserve a mention. I'll let you know when/if I find a solution.

[Rabbithead]

My Father sent me a tip from his NT Resource book that suggested cluster sizes are dependant on partition size:

Partition Size      Cluster size

512MB or less        512bytes

513MB-1024MB      1K

1025MB-2048MB  2K

2049MB-4096MB  4K

4097MB-8192MB  8K

8193MB-16384MB 16K

16385MB-32768MB  32K

>32768MB            64K

This is what what I had suspected from the beginning but wasn't sure. There may be a way to adjust cluster size with third party software (as mentioned previously) but I still haven't found anything in freeware or shareware. So for now, I've had to reduce the size of the partitions that hold my programs to 4096 MB so that they can be defragmented. I hope to find a more practical solution before installing my new 120 GB drive.

[Aaron]

I haven't been able to find any freeware apps that would convert the cluster size, all of them are demonstrations

If you do have the time, you should copy all your files from your Maxtor 40 GB hard drive (they're only program files, nothing like system files is there?) to another source, via network or another hard drive. Then reformat the 40GB with a cluster size of 4k, and copy all your program files back on.

It should work that way providing crucial OS files isn't stored on the 40GB