What "allocation unit size" should I use for a drive with a single NTFS partition?
Problem
I'm formatting a 1TB external hard drive as a single NTFS partition. This drive is mainly meant for storing media. Should I choose something other than the default ? The options range from 512 bytes to 64K. Are there any guidelines that I should use with partitions storing other data? Should I stop poking around and just leave it at "default"?
Error Output
allocation unit size
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1 Fix
Fix for: What "allocation unit size" should I use for a drive with a single NTFS partition?
If you are a "Standard User" by Microsoft's definition, you should keep the default 4096 bytes. Basically, the allocation unit size is the block size on your hard drive when it formats NTFS. If you have lots of small files, then it's a good idea to keep the allocation size small so your hard drive space won't be wasted. If you have lots of large files, keeping it higher will increase the system performance by having fewer blocks to seek. But again, nowadays hard drive capacity is getting higher…
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