I've a HP USB Drive of 8gb. I've formatted it with NTFS file system as all computers I connect it to are having OS either Windows XP or Windows 7, both of which supports NTFS. I'm confused what allocation size should I got with? By default 4096 bytes is selected. But why not I go with 512 bytes, or 64 kilobytes? facebook.com/prateek203

Since Windows XP the formatting defaults to the 4kb size. The 512 was Windows 2000 and smaller is older. Keep the default. 4kb excerpt from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457112.aspx Variable cluster sizes are now available on volumes converted to NTFS. The format command in Windows XP Professional now aligns FAT data clusters at the cluster size boundary. This alignment improves the conversion of FAT volumes to NTFS because the convert command can now use a variable cluster size, up to a maximum of 4 kilobytes (KB), for converted volumes, instead of a fixed 512-byte cluster size as used in Windows 2000.

oh so NTFS compression is not available over cluster size 4kb. Then I better stay with that! Thank you :)facebook.com/prateek203

oh but why not go for 512 bytes? NTFS compression will be supported in that too :/ Plus, it will utilize the memory more efficiently... facebook.com/prateek203

How can processing smaller clusters be more efficient? Just do whatever works for you. There's defaults and then there's options to change the defaults.

How can processing smaller clusters be more efficient? Do you know how clusters work? Just do whatever works for you. Any cluster size will "work", none of them will cause problem. It's just how to optimize the memory in the best possible way. facebook.com/prateek203

What's the drawback of setting cluster size to 512 bytes? It sure will use memory most efficiently, but what's am I compromising with? Speed? Lifetime of drive?facebook.com/prateek203

Let just say I set the clusters to 1GB and save a 100 MB file it will use the full 1GB. It's faster that way as it don't have to look for lots of small clusters. Also if clusters are set to 100MB and you save a 105 MB file it will take up Two 100MB cluster, with a lot less wast.

It's very unusual to format a flash drive with NTFS. Do you really need it? If not, you may be shortening your drive's life. NTFS is a "journaling" filesystem. This means it keeps extra records for each file, which allows it to recover more easily in case the file system is corrupted. But that's quite unlikely to happen with a solid-state device like a flash drive. So all you end up doing is writing to your drive many more times for the same operations. Since flash drives have a limited number of writes, that will shorten its life. The only reason to use NTFS on your flash drive is if you need to copy files that are 4 GB or larger, which is over FAT32's file-size limit. Otherwise, format your drive FAT32. Cheers, Ander

oh. and what cluster size would you recomment in FAT32? 512 bytes?facebook.com/prateek203