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I am about to format a 80GB HD to use with FSX only and I was wondering what Allocation unit size is. What size should I set it at?
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Formating HD - Allocation unit size?
- Thread starter UtahJazzfan
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It's the size of the units allocated for files. If you have an allocation size of 4096 and save a file 10 bytes long it will fit in one unit leaving 4086 bytes unused. If you store a 5000 bytes long file it will span two units leaving 3192 bytes unused in the second unit.
If you right click a file in Windows Explorer and select properties you can see both the actual size of the file and how much space it takes on the disk.
The smaller allocation size the less waste from unused bytes in the final unit, but this comes at a price. Obviously the file system needs to track which units are in use and by which files. The smaller the allocation size is the more units are in each file, and obviously it takes more room to track an 8KB file if it is split in 8 units of 1024 than if it is split in two units of 4096 each.
The general rule is to use a small allocation size for a drive where you expect many small files and a large allocation size for a drive where you expect fewer but larger files (for example if you do video editing).
While I have not investigated it in detail FS does contain a mix of large and small files, so I would not really worry about it and just run the default allocation size.
If you right click a file in Windows Explorer and select properties you can see both the actual size of the file and how much space it takes on the disk.
The smaller allocation size the less waste from unused bytes in the final unit, but this comes at a price. Obviously the file system needs to track which units are in use and by which files. The smaller the allocation size is the more units are in each file, and obviously it takes more room to track an 8KB file if it is split in 8 units of 1024 than if it is split in two units of 4096 each.
The general rule is to use a small allocation size for a drive where you expect many small files and a large allocation size for a drive where you expect fewer but larger files (for example if you do video editing).
While I have not investigated it in detail FS does contain a mix of large and small files, so I would not really worry about it and just run the default allocation size.