Question allocation size recommendation

[blackrain2]

I just bought a 12TB drive. I know that for larger files, I should format it with an allocation size of 4096. For smaller files, smaller allocation size. I get that.

About half of it would be large video files (between 5-10GB) and the other half will be general storage.

Should I not to do the mixed drive backup and just pick whether I want to use it for large or small files? Or it doesn't matter? If itsOK to do the mixed backup, what allocation size do you recommend for a mixed bag of stuff with about 30-40% smaller sized photos and files and 60-70% larger sized videos??

 

[VirtualLarry]

This was a fairly bit deal with the FAT(16/32/32X/EXFAT) filesystems. I'm not sure that it's really even an issue with NTFS-based filesystems. I would have to do some research.

Generally, this has more to do with book-keeping efficiency, and slack space waste per file. Most NTFS is 4096-byte clusters, I believe, to allow for a fast-path in the pagefile code. Unless you're paging to the disk, you might want a bigger allocation unit size. Then again, many files are accessed on-disk, via MEMMAP() (well, probably valloc()), and 4096-byte pages map exactly to x86 virtual-memory "pages".

I think that just leaving it at 4096 bytes and calling it a day is probably the best option.