Everyone seems interested in the minimal cluster size under FAT32 to conserve space. OR, everyone wants to know the max drive size that FAT32 supports. Neither of these are of interest to me!!!! i am not a conservationist and my drive is the size of a house. maybe that's an over statement.

I'm laying down huge .wav files that would be insane to break up into 4k clusters.

using Format with /z:n switch, what is the LARGEST cluster size I can force???? Can I get over 32k in win98? because I'm trying to get 64k and its not allowing that - "parameters are not within range".

some have suggested that different versions of format.com would allow it? true?? i'm using a recent version, not sure which, but off www.drd.dyndns.org/disks.html, "WinBootEssentials disk".

got a 48 G harddrive. tried for 64k with and without variety of partitions. any input appreciated.

I cannot find anything relating to forced FAT32 cluster sizes over 32KB, and as you have found, it causes a "parameters are not within range" error using Format /Z:N.

PowerQuest's PartitionMagic *may* be able to able to overcome 32KB cluster. Beside partition resizing it also allows cluster resize.

The cluster size is automatically determined by the size of the partition created. You have no control over it. Creating a larger cluster size would not help anyway.

Your post confused me MikeO. I always thought that FAT 32 clusters were SMALLER than FAT 16 clusters. If you have smaller parking spaces you can park more cars …

Here's what I found out: With FAT 16, the clusters are 32K. With FAT 32 they are 4K. This means that a 3k file (?) wastes only 1K of space on a FAT 32 partition while it wastes 29K on a FAT 16 partition.

Getting back to the original post: I don’t really think it matters what FAT you use or how big your clusters are. And why do you think it is “insane” to break your files into 4kclusters? These differences (28K!) are going to be irrelevant if you are using a 48GB HDD.

If storage is an issue, pop in a burner and then you can archive/access your waves at will!

I have not checked/provided my references but FAT32 suggests that it is a 32k system. In order to get larger than that you will have to move to NTFS or XP which is not limited to the 32k cluster.

The larger cluster size provides faster performance and provides less allocation units on the same size hard drive as the smaller cluster sizes.
This poster will gain speed over the concerns for available free space by using the larger cluster size.

Bryan

Here is one of many MS articles referring to FAT32 Cluster Size Limitation

Bryco:

Here's my reference for my post above: http://www.project9.com/fat32/ (if anybody cares!).

How much speed could be gained by having larger clusters? Would it really be significant? I do a lot of photo imaging with PSDs in the 20MB range. Could I significantly benefit from a NTFS?

Bryco,
thanks for the response. i did read that article from MS. no 64k or larger cluster size allowed... but

curious thing is that it states this also holds true for winXP and win2k. (your provided link states that it covers win2k, and there is a link for the XP version) You suggest in your first reply that win2k/XP is not bound to the 32k limit. And I do think you are correct. Are MS's statements only "recommended" limitations against tweaking in this instance?

The larger cluster size, and reasoning behind it, is advocated at www.bluelifeaudio.com/~pcconfig/system/windows/formatting.htm. The author does use 64k cluster size.

as always, thanks for the input.