Cluster Size on Windows 2000 with NTFS

[jehh]

I'm running a pair of drives under Windows 2000 both with NTFS on them. Both drives have 512 byte clusters (1 sector per cluster).

I want to convert to 4k per cluster (8 sectors per cluster), how do I do this?

I do have Partition Magic 6.0, but it grays out the option to convert cluster size.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[jaywallen]

Hi,

You'll have to reformat those partitions to change cluster size. If you choose NTFS as the file system when you install W2K, it will atuomatically set 4,096 bytes as the allocation unit size if the partition being formatted is larger than 2 gigabytes in size. Beware of converting partitions. When you convert from FAT or FAT32 you wind up with 512 byte clusters. I suppose that may be how you would up with the cluster size you have on those partitions. Partition Magic, AFAIK, is only able to convert cluster sizes on FAT / FAT32 partitions.

You can reduce some of the deleterious effects of 512 byte clusters on performance by keeping the MFT, pagefile and registry hives (as well as a bunch of other files) defragged. The defragger W2K comes with doesn't do this, but many aftermarket defraggers do. I suggest using one which defrags the registry hives, pagefile and MFT at boot time. That's the method Microsoft recommends. (Norton Speed Disk does it on the fly. Seems like a great idea, but I don't do stuff to the OS that the writers says not to do.) I use O&O on some systems, Diskeeper (the bigger brother of the inbuilt defragger) on others.

Regards,
Jim

 

[danielshoes]

Friend,

Are you sure you can do it without losing all your data?

 

[jehh]

That is what I was afraid of. I cannot reformat, my imporant data is backed up, but not everything.

Sigh... This is why I bought Partition Magic in the first place, 2000 will do the conversion, what do I need Partition Magic for? Sigh...

I may have to buy another hard drive, copy the data over, reformat these drives, then copy it back.

Sigh...

Is there NO way to convert the drives without reformating?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[jaywallen]

I'm sorry. I know of no way to change the cluster sizes on an NTFS partition without reformatting it. I will look around to see if I can find any method, but I am doubtful. I've looked into this pretty thoroughly before.

Regards,
Jim