Hard Drive Partioning - FAT32 Cluster Size

[NovaTone]

I just got a new 60GB HD (UDMA/ATA 100; 7200rpm). Installed it under a year-old motherboard and Win98SE. Drive size limitations do not apply. I setup the drive under one main partition with fdisk using FAT 32. The current cluster size for the drive is 32768 Bytes/cluster. Is this correct? I thought FAT 32 sets up cluster sizes of ~4K/cluster. Thanks for the help.

 

[Medea]

<I thought FAT 32 sets up cluster sizes of ~4K/cluster.>

Yes and no, because it depends on the size of your hd. On drives that are 8gigs and less, you'll have 4Kb clusters. On your 60gig drive, you have 32768 bytes or 32Kb clusters which is just what you're supposed to have.

 

[lilnnjaboy]

FAT16 used 4K cluster sizes. FAT32 likes 32K cluster size. When you do a setup for WinNT default is a 32K cluster size. It's just the ideal size...and the most efficient. Think about it....4K cluster size when you are transfering 300 MBs. That's an awful lot of work for the system. Back in the FAT16 days...the largest program took up like 30MBs.

 

[bacillus]

FAT32 Cluster Sizes:
Partition size Cluster size
-------------------------------------
512 MB to 8,191 MB 4 KB
8,192 MB to 16,383 MB 8 KB
16,384 MB to 32,767 MB 16 KB
Larger than 32,768 MB 32 KB

 

[Medea]

bacillus gave you the more accurate answer via the chart. I just didn't feel like cutting and pasting.. So, here goes the whole enchillada:

FAT32 uses 4KB clusters(up to 8GB) and FAT16 2KB-32KB cluster sizes
depending on the HDD size.

HD size in MB-------Cluster size
0 - 15--------------4096-4KB-(8 sectors)-------12-bit
16 - 127------------2048-2KB-(4 sectors)-------16-bit
128 - 255-----------4096-4KB-(8 sectors)-------16-bit
256 - 511-----------8192-8KB-(16 sectors)------16-bit
512 - 1023----------16384-16KB-(32 sectors)----16-bit
1024 - 2047---------32768-32KB-(64 sectors)----16-bit
(Volume sizes are in binary megabytes as used by FDISK)

The partition types supported by OSR2 and Windows 98 are as follows:

Partition-----Size-----------------FAT Type
01------------0-15 MB--------------12-Bit
04------------16-32 MB-------------16-Bit
05------------0-2 GB---------------n/a
06------------32 MB-2 GB-----------16-bit
0E------------32 MB-2 GB-----------16-bit
0F------------0-2 GB---------------n/a
0B------------512 MB-2 terabytes---32-bit
0C------------512 MB-2 terabytes---32-bit

Edit: I hate cutting and pasting - it comes out all jumbled when you post, but this should be a little more legible. Looks like bacillus and I have this same info buried somewhere on our respective hd's.