Allocation Unit Size???

[Blankie440]

Hey everyone,

I have wondered this for some time now. Everytime I go to format a new HDD it gives me a drop down menu of different Allocation Unit Sizes that I can choose from or just use default. Without knowing what this does I've always chosen default. I was wondering if anyone can tell me what I gain/lose from changing the size between the listed options ranging from 512-64K. Also what the general use of this is and in what situations it can be beneficial to set a specific size.

[Pyromaniacc]

Think of a drive as being split up into a bunch of small units of space. Allocation unit size determines what the size of these units will be. When you save something, it takes up as many whole units it needs and even if data being stored in a unit is smaller then the capacity, it still consumes this entire unit. An example of this would be to look at the properties of an icon: in my case an icon has a size of 699 bytes but takes up 4KB because my allocation unit size is 4k. As for the setting, just leave it on default (4k).

[dchen12]

Are there any other advantages or disadvantages of using larger or smaller allocation unit sizes?

Whenever I reformat my USB sticks, I just set it to "default allocation size."

[Pyromaniacc]

Smaller allocation sizes can reduce disk space usage and depending on whats on the disk larger allocation size can speed it up. These differences are so tiny though that your best bet is leaving it on default.

[Blankie440]

Thanks for the info!

[ramzorz]

I was also curious as to what this was. Thanks for explaining. :)