Changing HDD Cluster Size

  • Thread starter Thread starter SafeHex
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S

SafeHex

Is it in any way advantageous to change the cluster size from 512
Bytes/sector to the Windows XP default 4096 Bytes/sector for a 80 GB system
drive of a Windows XP Pro (SP) machine? If so, is Partition Magic (v7)
capable of doing it? Or, is there any other way?

For reasons forgotten now, that drive was formatted on another machine with
NTFS and the small cluster size. The install was then done selecting "leave
the format unchanged...", about 3 years ago.

Everything works excellently but the drive does a lot of "hunting" while
searching for files now that about half the drive is occupied.

Considering the amount of software on this machine as well as the customized
preferences, it would be pretty time-consuming to do a fresh install, even
though the owner of this machine does have all the original disks available
and immaculately kept.

Regards and thanks for any suggestions in advance.

SafeHex
 
Partition Magic 8.01 (or later - not 7.0) can change the cluster size. It
will take a long time (hours) to do so. Also, there is a chance you may
loose everything on the partition/drive necessitating a reinstall anyway.

I heartily suggest you back up "everything" that you can't afford to loose
and perform the change overnight.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
SafeHex said:
Is it in any way advantageous to change the cluster size from 512
Bytes/sector to the Windows XP default 4096 Bytes/sector for a 80 GB system
drive of a Windows XP Pro (SP) machine? If so, is Partition Magic (v7)
capable of doing it? Or, is there any other way?

For reasons forgotten now, that drive was formatted on another machine with
NTFS and the small cluster size. The install was then done selecting "leave
the format unchanged...", about 3 years ago.

Everything works excellently but the drive does a lot of "hunting" while
searching for files now that about half the drive is occupied.

Considering the amount of software on this machine as well as the
customized
preferences, it would be pretty time-consuming to do a fresh install, even
though the owner of this machine does have all the original disks available
and immaculately kept.

Regards and thanks for any suggestions in advance.

SafeHex
Click to expand...

Richard gave good advice. I can't really add to that except to point out
that the partition was apparently converted from FAT32 to NTFS without
re-aligning partition boundaries as can (and should) be done using
something such as BootItNG prior to the conversion.
S
ince you should backup and be prepared for a restore you may as well
just re-format the partition with NTFS then restore from backup, it may
take less time.

Steve N.
 
Thanks very much Richard and Steve for your responses.

Richard - you are right: PM 7 does not enable a cluster resize even though
it is available in its advanced options! The utility itself is greyed out!

Steve - thanks for the tip about the restore from back-up tip.

We also just now did a complete back up of the work files and documents to
an external drive and also imaged the system drive, in case they might be
required!

We are going to try out PM 8 for the job in a day or so. Will post later how
it goes!

Regards and thanks again.

SafeHex
 
SafeHex said:
Is it in any way advantageous to change the cluster size from 512
Bytes/sector to the Windows XP default 4096 Bytes/sector for a 80 GB system
drive of a Windows XP Pro (SP) machine? If so, is Partition Magic (v7)
capable of doing it? Or, is there any other way?
Click to expand...

Important consideration: Does the machine work fine as is? If yes, then
leave alone.

IIRC, smaller cluster size is more efficient in terms of wasted space,
since a file will take up at least one sector, and shouldn't share it
with any other. Larger cluster size is supposted to give you faster
access time, though i don't recall the logic behind this.
 
SafeHex said:
Thanks very much Richard and Steve for your responses.

Richard - you are right: PM 7 does not enable a cluster resize even though
it is available in its advanced options! The utility itself is greyed out!

Steve - thanks for the tip about the restore from back-up tip.

We also just now did a complete back up of the work files and documents to
an external drive and also imaged the system drive, in case they might be
required!

We are going to try out PM 8 for the job in a day or so. Will post later
how
it goes!

Regards and thanks again.

SafeHex
Click to expand...

You're most welcome, good luck, and please let us know how it goes.

Steve N.
 
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