Right Clusterzise on HD?

[laughingbear]

Greetings,

I am wondering whether some of you can help me out here with a tech-related question.

I just ordered a FW800 250Gig Lacie drive, and I somehow wonder about a)clustersize and b)partitioning the drive.

a)From the dark clouded deep of my mind, I seem to remember that there is something called "slags?", that would be unused HD space due to insufficient cluster size if I am not mistaken.

Now I wonder what the right clusterzise is to set under NTFS and how I can determine the same. I mean, lest say i want one harddrive where the average filesize is 4,3Gigs for my DVD backups, and another HD wheere the average size is below one Gig.... I wonder how I can determine the best clustersize!

b)Are there any helpful insights into Partitionsizes? I have this 250 Gig and another 160 Gig internal, and I really hear different storiesabout partitioning.

The external will be mainly for samplestreaming, and the internal for recording.

Any insights would be much appreciated.

Thx for reading
Peace
~^..^~
Bear

[Dietz]

Hello Bear,

I'll move this thread to the Main Forum, so it will catch the attention of Those Who Know ;-] more easily.

/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

[laughingbear]

Hi Dietz and thanks ;o)

[timkiel]

Hi Laughingbear,

Interesting questions. My take on the matter is just to let NTFS (WinXP or 2000) decide and go with the default cluster size.

Basically, if you have a lot of small files (<500k each) then you will increase the capacity and have less "waste" on your HDs by having a small cluster size, however this has to be traded off against a larget MFT (Master File Table) which keeps track of all those clusters.

Larger cluster sizes provide better performance with large files, but with the trade off being more "waste".

Its all a bit swings and roundabouts as you can see- so unless you are really having some problems I'd not worry and stick with default NTFS cluster size. Works fine for me on my LACIE 250GB FW/USB2 drives!

Regards

Tim

[cm]

the default cluster size for NTFS is 512 byte - a good choice for alldays applications (although if i look at word files .... ok, back to topic)
i'd prefer 4096 byte - why? this gives me 1/8 of the basic overhead and still allow me to defrag the partition with the onboard defrag of W2K/XP.
you could set the clustersize also up to 64KB, but then you would need a third party tool to defrag or reformat your drive in case. beeing aware sample buffer size is 128 K (stereo) in giga not a too bad idea ....

another thing: there is no reason to partition a drive (except you are forced to have your system files and others on one disk maybe) and please choose always primary partitions and *basic* as type of disk unless you like to create stripe sets - all this will reduce the size of and unnecessary access to the file allocation table and finally increase the overall performance
christian

[mathis]

I just reformatted my NTFS audio tracking harddrive from default winxp clustersize to 4096 and I can confirm it does make a difference. A project which didn´t play anymore in realtime now plays without problems.

Thanks, cm!

[Peter Roos]

Mathis: too many tracks! write chamber music instead [[;)]] [:P]

[mathis]

Alright.... [:(] (off he goes..)

[laughingbear]

Now you all got me pondering. LOL

The waste at a 64kb clustersize on a 80 gig drive is round about 450 MB, not too bad a trade if the performance is better. Or is it not?

May be I am doing the following totally wrong, please have a look.

My Pc has NOTHING left on it but DVD copy tools and Windows. ;o)

Spring clean up so to speak. I deleted everything on it, because I should get my new hardware in a few days, that would be the 160 Gig internal and a 250 Gig external.

I found that the original installation, the one the dealer made was partitioned C:\\ with 15 Gig and 65 Gig and had windows on the 15 Gig, but was it was organized with 4K clustersize.

So I used partitionmagic, and changed clustersize to 64kb, and merged the both partitions into one big.

Now I am wondering about the best way to install everything.

My planb is this:

SYSDRIVE: 80 gig c:....\\win...\\all programs...\\temp

VIDEODRIVE: 80 gig d:....\\windows pagefile....\\premiere projects....\\ photoshop projects.....\\webprojects.... \\?DVD temp?
(not sure where to pack a DVD part into best, because I think I may be should make space for lets say 5 DVDs plus 1 rip hence 35 Gig max. P[artition and from the 80 gig this sounds a lot)

AUDIODRIVE: 160 gig e: ....\\2 partitions e:\\and f:\
80 gig e:....\\Nuendo Projects
80 gig f:\\....\\ ?DVD? Instead of having it on the D drive? and space for Scratch discs and games?

AUDIODATA 250 gig g:....\\partitioned into g:\\ and h:\
160 gig g:\\....sample data
80 gig h:\\....DAT files and larger plugins like Atmopshere, Trilogy and Stylus (already 10 Gig)

The reason I want to put Spectrasonics etc DAT files on a seperate partition from samplestreaming data is that it works from RAM, hence it loads the instruments one time only and then there is no more reading from that partition, so the sample streaming of the first partition has no I/O interrupts to deal with.

The reason I put the Windows pagefile onto the second physical harddrivce d:\\ is for generell better performance. I have a 3Gig fixed pagefile installed which is needed for proggies like premiere.

Is it stupid to have the system drive at 80 gig unpartitioned and install all programs there as well, like adobe, nuendo etc etc etc etc?

Phewww.... so far my plan, any comments? What could I do better?

~^..^~

[cm]

~^..^~, i'd not set clustersize on the system drive to 64K - this is the one who will be most fragmented (temp directories, installing/uninstalling programs/tools/plugins/ect, many little files like icons, logs, ect)
to partition the audio drives (where the 64K make more sense) is a matter of taste in your config - be aware the first partition will be the faster one
christian

[laughingbear]

----Hallo Christian, ich habe leider deine email verloren zusammen mit ca 40 weiteren adressen. [:O]( sonst haett ich dich privat mal angefunkt. ----

Well, I understand that point, I am going to resize then back to 4kb, but what about and this is my crucial question, poartitioning the c: sys drive?

Is there a difference between

1st case: C with 80 gigs unpartitioned all programs and plugins whacked onto it...or

2nd case: C partitioned for 1st windows only on c, and second all programs and plugins on the d: which would be the second logical parition, hence having the program files foilder on the second partition, something that I was suggest stronlgy to do so. But he could not explain really why this would be better....

I really dont know whats the best way to do that. Stupid greenhorn me. LOL;o)

[cm]

bitte die email steht da gross und mächtig als schöner blauer knopf [;)]

if i had a 80 gig system drive for nothing else than windows and programs i'd partition it to 2 x 40 GB and allow me the luxury of a second install of windows (dual boot) and an image of both.
so i'd be in a position to have a *productive system* which is perfectly clean and a *testing system* to check out new applications, play around with settings, plugins, tools, whatever - if something goes wrong i could return to the last good config at any time.
40 GB should be big enough for any sophisticated installation and temp directories or scratch disks should reside on a seperate physical disk anyway

christian

[laughingbear]

Thx Christian....

Meanwhile.... the Lacie external FW800 is a DREAM! Fast as hell and very quiet (no fan!) Very nice piece of hardware.

I revisited my recording concpet and ordered a SATA Raid controller together with two Western Digital Raptor 74Gig SATA disks (10,000rpm) that I configure in a RAID 0 array. [:O])

Never been faster ~^OO^~ LOL

For backups i ordered a removable Kingston Tray to slot in UDMA drives, as well as the odd DVD's.

Quite happy with my concept so far.... If all goes well, I can go back to making music by the end of the week .... finally

Thx again!

Rgds
~^..^~
Bear