Right Click- Format Drive

[ramakanta]

when i want to format the hard drive or pen drive, there is a option - Allocation unit size . what does it means. suppose i want to select any one - default allocation size or any other bytes or kilobytes options . whats happens . please help me with details.
thank you.



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[Mario]

Here and here
Always try a little of this before posting.

 

[Alien]

It is the size of the small packets your hard drive will be divided into while formatting. Consider you have kept 4096bytes as allocation size, a 1000byte file will be allocated 4096bytes. Similarly a 10000byte file will be allocated 4096*3bytes. Smaller the allocation size the greater space you have but lesser speed.

 

[reniarahim1]

All file systems that are used by Windows organize your hard disk based on cluster size (also known as allocation unit size). Cluster size represents the smallest amount of disk space that can be used to hold a file. When file sizes do not come out to an even multiple of the cluster size, additional space must be used to hold the file (up to the next multiple of the cluster size). On the typical hard disk partition, the average amount of space that is lost in this manner can be calculated by using the equation (cluster size)/2 * (number of files).

If no cluster size is specified when you format a partition, defaults are selected based on the size of the partition. These defaults are selected to reduce the space that is lost and to reduce the fragmentation that occurs on the partition.

Refer below page for more details :- Default cluster size for NTFS, FAT, and exFAT