I am wondering how using the 64kb clusters would be better then the default 4kb does this actually work? If this really does work what does it actually do I like to read more about this
Work for what? You trying to capture video or something? Give more detail for your end goal, and you will get more help.
well I was asking advice about a HTPC build I am doing and someone said that I should change the clusters on the hard drive to 64kb this is why I am asking this what does that do and what is it for?
Strange the person that said it didn't tell you,guess they didn't know either which is what google is used for,my 5 cents worth ignore it & leave it at default especially if you use compression
well the thing is I did google and couldn't find out why e 64kb clusters would be better then the default 4kb this is why I posted in here. so you are saying that it really makes no difference ok thats all I needed to know Thank you
When searching you'll find it's all in the wording i.e "64 bit cluster" reveals sweet fa,change it to "cluster size on hdd" gets results,search engines suk..lol..,in essence it's to do with the size of files you intend to store which determines what cluster size is used,question that really needs to be asked is can you see a notable difference,somehow without a machine to show a graph i highly doubt it. 1-fresh install of windows-windows overtime gets slower a reinstall will always help 2-add a few of your fav apps 3-update windows fully 4-install the rest of your 3rd party software 5-have a 2nd hdd installed & move the pagefile to it 6-disable hibernation when not using it 7-on the slave hdd create a good size partition & store your music & any other loose files you have including pictures etc actually you could store it on the master hdd in a separate partition that way C is always kept clean 7-More Ram for xp of 2gb, for vista it's 4GB even more if you can afford it xp requires 1gb to run really well that leaves 1gb for other apps Vista requires 2gb & leaves 2gb for other apps 8-learn what running processes in the task manager can be shut down this link can help http://www.processlibrary.com/quicklink/ 9-use ccleaner to disable other startup programs that can be started manually when needed it's under TOOLS button 10-before doing a defrag set pagefile to none (only if it resides on drive C)boot to safe mode defrag from there, then reset pagefile when it's finished,disable hibernation also,both those two can't be defragged 11-tweakui from microsoft handy little app especially for xp http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_optimization.htm Depending on which OS you have CNet & Tech Republic have tuts on how to do registry changes that make both OS's perform better or just do a search on "how to speed up xp" or "vista"
64kb clusters are for recording/reading video files. It is especially useful when you are streaming video. If you encounter stuttering on your videos it is probably cause by using the default 4kb clusters. Here's a quote from another forum when someone asked if 64kb is mandatory. "Are you serious? Have you ever used VMC or Windows XP Media Center, BeyondTV or any other PC-based PVR? If so you'd realize that the 64kb file formatting for NTFS is recommended by all of them - yes even VMC. It isn't a requirement, but certainly recommended. The reason for this is that A/V files are typically very large files so the 64kb cluster speeds up your file transfers and therefore provides better performance on your recording and video storage drives. This is a basic WINDOWS fact - not a SageTV fact." I use it on all my video storage drives and never had any problems playing or recording video files.
so if I have a few hard drive like one for my Operating system and the rest for video storage I would get better performance but doing the 64kb file formatting for NTFS like I said for the storage drives not the primary Operating system drive?
Quote: How to determine? The simplest (but rough) way is to divide number of files on the drive by total disk usage in kilobytes. Another way is to just think about data you are going to store on the drive before formatting. If you are going to store multimedia stuff that is usually huge in size, make cluster bigger to increase performance. If small web pages or text documents, make cluster size smaller not to loose a lot of disk space. There's a trade off the bigger the cluster the more disk space is wasted tho apparently there is a performance gain when transferring large data amounts,you could just make it 64 from the outset or convert from 4kb if you find there are viewing issues,i myself don't stream as i have no need too as yet, so my 750gb external which houses the movie files is using 4kb cluster & never gives issues,however if i was to stream to another room that could quite possibly be a problem in which case a cluster increase maybe necessary since it's USB,it kinda makes sense the larger the cluster the less movement the heads need to make across the hdd disk
In theory 64k is better, but it depends on the drive and the controler as well. VMC's TV recording worked better with 4K than with 64K when I tried it on my nvidia board, but works better with 64K on my AMD board. If you are not having problems, then you should not be woried about it, especialy if you are already at 4K.
well that is good info. I still havn't finished with my build I put it all togeter and the thing didn't post after trying multiple thing I eneded up pulling the cpu to discover that one of the pins where bent and when I went to straighten it it broke lol so all of the info I am getting is a good thing since I have to wait for my new cpu hehe
You can use small tweezers,small electrical screwdrivers,just to name a few,all depends on how heavy handed you are.
As far as I remember (from my uni days many moons ago) It's all about the size of files to be stored on the drive... (don't quote me but....) You can't store 2 different files (or parts of 2 separate files) in a cluster. It's a FAT (File Allocation Table) limitation. i.e. if you were going to store hundreds of tiny 1kb files in a 64kb cluster, you can immediately see the amount of wastage that would occur... However, chunky video's or mp3's will EASILY use more than the 64kb, so you should get less wastage...
