Formatting a 20G HDD, One Partition, With Small Size Clusters

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brad
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Brad

Hi,

I installed a 20G HDD in my Windows 98se computer. With one partition,
I formatted it. The results is 16K byte clusters. With a FAT32 system,
a 32 bit number ("index") can represent around 4.3G. This in effect should
allow around 4 billion clusters maximum.

The major reason for a smaller cluster size is to reduce waste of disk
space. Example, if you wrote a 1K byte file to the HDD, the free space will
be reduced by 16K (15K wasted).

How can I format this 20G HDD in such a way to produce smaller clusters
without adding partitions?

Thanks in advance, Brad

Before you type your password, credit card number, etc.,
be sure there is no active keystroke logger (spyware) in your PC.
 
Brad said:
Hi,

I installed a 20G HDD in my Windows 98se computer. With one partition,
I formatted it. The results is 16K byte clusters. With a FAT32 system,
a 32 bit number ("index") can represent around 4.3G. This in effect should
allow around 4 billion clusters maximum.

The major reason for a smaller cluster size is to reduce waste of disk
space. Example, if you wrote a 1K byte file to the HDD, the free space will
be reduced by 16K (15K wasted).

How can I format this 20G HDD in such a way to produce smaller clusters
without adding partitions?

Thanks in advance, Brad

Before you type your password, credit card number, etc.,
be sure there is no active keystroke logger (spyware) in your PC.
Click to expand...

The program fat32format.exe allows you to adjust the cluster size as you
wish, within limits.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

I have used this program to format large external USB drives that the
regular Windoze format utility won't touch. It is a command-line utility
which is both fast and efficient.
 
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