Cluster Sizes

Dempsey · 31-05-2004 02:42PM #1

How do ya check the cluster size in windows 2000 and what is the best size to use

ColmOT [MSFT] · 31-05-2004 04:24PM

Dempsey, if you run CHKDSK you'll get the following output:

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
2558343 total allocation units on disk.
1820154 allocation units available on disk.

Above, you can see that it lists the allocation unit size as 4k.

To determine which size to use really depends on what you're storing on the disk. If you want to store a lot of small files, it'e better to use a small size, because if you have a 1k file, it will occupy 4k when using a 4k unit size. Thus you're losing a lot of disk space in this way.
Alternatively, there is no need to have such small allocation unit sizes if you're storing large media files etc.

Hope this helps,

Colm.