[anvil82]

I just got a 160gb drive used mainly for large (3mb - 4gb+) files.

I have the option to set the Allocation unit size.

What is the best one to use?

I understand the smaller the size, the more effecient it is for small files so it doesn't take up that much space.

What is the benefit of a large (16k, 32k, 64k) unit sizes?


Thanks.

[KoolDrew]

Theoretically a larger cluster size would result in better performance but I doubt this will make much difference in real world performance (larger files may change this so correct me if I am wrong).

4k is probally the best all around cluster size though.

[I.M.O.G.]

4k is generally regarded as the best all around, because it compromises decently between performance and slack (wasted space).

If you have a dedicated partition for large media files, I would use the largest cluser size possible, as you will not have hardly any slack, but performance should be slightly improved.

Basically the problem with using large clusters is that if you save a a 2kb text file on a partition that uses 64k clusters for example, saving that file will use 64k of the hard disk and 62k of that is wasted space. If you save a 70kb text file to a partition using 64k clusters, 58k is then wasted. If you have many many small files like this, the waste becomes very considerable... If you have a parition with 120 ~700MB files on it, the wasted space is very minimal compared to the total storage on the drive, and performance will be a bit better because the larger cluster size allows the data to be read in large consistent chunks.