Cluster (allocation Unit) Size For NTFS In Windows 7?
Jan 25, 2011
I am using Win 7 Pro x32 and have partitioned my hard drive into two NTFS partitions. One is for my Windows other one is for my files and personal documents.I'd like to know how to format the partitions in terms of cluster size. I read a lot of articles which didn't actually answer my question - what are the differences between formatting with a big and small cluster size, and how does all that influence the overall performance. I should also mention that I am willing to sacrifice some bits and bytes from my partitions, if needed, as long as I could somehow increase performance. Also, I noticed that the standard Windows 7's formatting dialogue allows to format a partition only with a limited size of clusters compared to trying to format a partition using software such as Acronis Disk Director or Paragon Hard Disk Manager where I was able to format with a much greater cluster size. What to do, what to do...? You could save the small talk such as - 'small cluster size wastes less disk space but works slower, and vice versa, greater cluster size wastes more space but gives better performance'.
This is an issue with trying to use the Windows Backup utility with an external hard drive (Seagate GoFlex Desk) with more than 2TB of storage (in this case 3TB). I have looked into this and found that this is a common problem related to the backup utility being unable to deal with drives that have a 4kb allocation unit size. The typical advice is to reformat with an allocation size of 512B, which it will be able to work with.
The problem is that Windows will not let me reformat with that size. The smallest unit it allows is 4kb, which is exactly the problem. If I initiate the format dialog on other NTFS drives I have, 512B shows up as an option. Just not on my external. And yet, this solution appears all over the place and people have claimed it solved their problem. I have even (twice) tried creating a second partition on the external (1.5TB and then 1TB), neither has allowed an allocation unit size less than 4k, even though my 1TB internal drive did allow this.
I am not really interested in third party backup or imaging programs. With my old 500GB external, I used the Windows Backup utility to make a few system images and there have been at least two situations where a bad driver or something has resulted in having to go back to a restore point, but finding no suitable ones available, and thus restoring to the backup image. This has been the simplest way of recovering from these disasters and it has worked every time. For normal file backups, I have a number of cloud storage systems and I can use the software Seagate included with the drive. However, the one and only reason I got a hard drive this large is that it would allow me to make a lot of Windows system images, and that is the one thing I am unable to do. I do not understand why I cannot use the one fix everyone online recommends. I have emailed Seagate tech support about this but they have not responded.
how to backup all printer definitions in a MSCS Cluster Server 2003 environment. The printers are integrated in the cluster. As long as he printers have not been in the cluster, we used printmig.exe, but this is not working in a cluster.
I have a triple boot system: XP 32 bit, XP 64 bit, Win7 Pro 64 bit, each on a separate partition on separate hard drives. I can backup each of the XP OS partitions with a program I wrote that basically does a file and folder copy to a folder in a spare partition on one of the hard drives. The copy program I wrote tries to preserve time stamp and short file name info, otherwise, it's just a file and folder copy program. I use windiff to verify after a backup (or restore). For a restore, I can quick format a partition and copy the files back (using the program I wrote).
I tried doing the same with the Win 7 OS partition, backup, quick format, restore, but some of the information (metadata?) is lost. All of the actual data is there, and windiff doesn't show any differences, and Win 7 boots up, but then there are issues. ATI video driver catalyst control center fails to run (don't recall error message). The publisher information for many (or most or all) of the programs is lost, causing User Acess Control dialog box to appear anytime I tried to run a program,which should be Microsoft, but shows up as unknown. Internet Explorer 8 will state that a program has corrupted the default search provider repeatedly (even after selecting one).
So something is different between Win 7 NTFS and Win XP NTFS, or I need to enhance my copy program to copy addtional file information when doing the copies. If I get the time, I'll try a drag and drop from windows explorer in XP to see if that makes any difference.So currently I'm stuck using Win 7 system image backup for the Win 7 OS partition (it also images the C partition which contains the boot files like bootmgr).
I can't finish typing a page in using WORD GOOGLE or any other application without losing the whole text.Computer Windows 7. has all available memory installed
I'm going to fix my partition set-up (for example removing the one with Vista) and would like to know how much I should allocate to the partition with 7. (At the moment it's 32 GB.)
I am going to keep my files on a different partition. But what about the "program files"? Is it "better" to have them on the same partition as windows 7 or not? How big "should" the 7 partition be?
I'm running Win XP Mode on Win 7 Pro x64. XP is showing only 512mb RAM, is there a way to increase this to a full 1GB of RAM? I have a total of 4GB on the machine.
When I marked a whole folder or a couple of files in Windows Explorer in Windows XP then the sum/total size of all marked files is (was) shown in the status bar in the bottom of the WinExp window.
i recently uninstalled vmware, but half my ram is still allocated to the virtual pc, which means my laptop now sucks, i only have 512mb ram anyway. Can someone let me know how to get my ram back?
A client brought in a Dell laptop with a missing driver. A tech downloaded a driver onto a flash drive. I'm not sure of where the driver came from. When the flash drive was put into the computer it started loading something and the tech pulled it out and restarted the unit. After reboot the tech noticed that the start menu was empty. Typical of a hidden files infection. After a second reboot the unit goes straight to startup repair. I pulled the HDD out of the unit and hooked it up to another computer with an enclosure. The drive reads as 99.9% free space. All of the the folders are there but they all show as empty (0 bytes). The recovery partition is intact and the drive passes Dell diags. Any ideas on recovering the data? I'm sure I could just restore it but the client needs the data.
How do I set Windows 7's Recycle Bin to automatically have a default disk space allocation for deleted files from external hard drives and TrueCrypt-mounted volumes?I remember in Windows XP, I can set a percentage of total disk space that will automatically used as storage capacity for deleted files by the Recycle Bin, and this will be to all external HDs or TC-mounted volumes.Windows 7 defaults to the 'Don't move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted' setting for newly mounted external HDs and TC mounted volumes. Since I am expecting deleted files to go to the Recycle Bin, sometimes this causes an 'Oops' when I delete files in external hard drives or TC mounted volumes, as Windows does not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin, but just deletes the files permanently.
I have two laptops (both Toshiba's, 4yrs and 2yrs old). Running Windows 7 Pro x64 on older one and Vista Home Prem x64 on newer one.
I want to get rid of older one (for obvious reasons), but don't want to purchase a new license for Windows 7. How can I swap the HDD's before ditching the antiquated unit?
I am currently running core i5 2500k @ 4.5GHz at 1.34v and while running intel burn test I reach up to 80C and the idle is around 45-50. My ambient temp is around 23c-25c
As for the H60 it is running how it should at full pump speed so i duno if its just me or the temps are little too high. I tested with a cheap 15 pound heat sink and fan I was getting the same temp so what real advantage is this achieving
I have only about 100GB left on my mirrored RAID on my desktop and I am looking for a NAS. I have been looking at this Synology one and this Buffalo one. I like the Buffalo one because it comes with 12TB and depending on the drives may be cheaper.
putting together an mobo handling 8GB ddr3 1333 & using max ram 8GB, duo core 2 E8400 3.0GHz 64bit chip, and installing Windows 7 HPrem 64bit. was wondering about how large of a power supply unit i should be considering?Sometimes all of the ram will prob be used w/ vid editing and other times just regular 2-3 applications open.
I'm wondering where I can find a free driver download for my toshiba satellite c650D -00E because my video audio on my built-in video camera is terrible.know where I can find this driver?
I am running out of space on my system drive (120GB SSD with < 6GB remaining). It happened in only 12 months. I'd like to know where all that space went, which files are using it. So I'm looking for a way to rank files by size regardless of their folder location, largest-to-smallest, ideally without a full scan of the disk if there are internal indexes that have this info.
We have. Computer its 2.8ghz 2gb ram 1x2 dimmand 500gb hdd it has BSOD and hasnt worked for a month. NOTHING at all works tried every single way to get in it just says ntfs.sys page fault in nonpaged area i cand download amything do anything it loads to a bsod
Just decided to upgrade from SP3 to 7 today, downloaded, burned and now when i boot from disk. windows loads then an error pops up saying"Windows failed to load because a critical , missing, or corrupt""windowssystem32driverstfs.sys"
Setup mb asus p6t6 ich10r (raid controller) 2 x vertex 30GB 2 x seagate 1.5TB in ( motherboards controller fakeraid ) raid 0 array Volume1 = 1 GPT partition with 1 windows dynamic simple volume ntfs formated (just 1 big ~3TB partition for storage created on a previous install of Windows 7)
Reinstall Window 7 on a vertex
Problem: After reinstall the raid array is not recognized by Windows 7 it asks me to initialize the disk (which is a raid volume). I say yes, then asks to create MBR or GPT i say GPT. But then it says the disk is unallocated and wants me to create a new dynamic volume, i say simple volume. But now is asking to format... and here i stopped, with out formating to new ntfs.
Questions: Is there a way to recuperate / restore / reinstate / recover / rescue / rebuild .... the old dynamic ntfs simple volume ? So that i could access the data without having to use a data recuperation program for 3TB of data.
Will a quick ntfs format and a scan-disk make that possible?
