ntfs with alu 512 bytes under windows 10

[Petros Zimourtopoulos]

Hello.

Any freeware, pleae, to format in ntfs with an alu of 512 bytes under windows 10 ?

TIA

pez

[Shadow]

What for? If it's to reduce slack it won't make much
difference.
https://www.diskpart.com (AOMEI) has free formatting software.
Never tried it on a HD, only on pendrives.

PS I'm interpreting "ALU" as "cluster size".
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
Google Fuchsia - 2021

[Mike Dee]

Petros Zimourtopoulos wrote:

> Any freeware, pleae, to format in ntfs with an alu of 512 bytes
> under windows 10 ?

GParted perhaps? <https://gparted.org/livecd.php>

It doesn't run under Windows 10, rather, it is a live system that
will boot your PC via removable media, CD/DVD/USB etc.

Often used to repartition drives it can also be used for
formatting HD's etc.

It fully supports NTFS

From their features page: <https://gparted.org/features.php>

<quote>
GParted works with the following storage devices:

* Hard disk drives (e.g., SATA, IDE, and SCSI)
* Flash memory devices, such as USB memory sticks, Solid State
Drives (SSD's), and Non-Volatile Memory Express devices (NVMe's)
* RAID Devices (hardware RAID, motherboard BIOS RAID, and Linux
software RAID)
* All sector sizes (e.g., devices with 512, 1024, 2048, 4096
byte sectors and more)
</quote>

HTH

--
dee

[B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2022 18:49:55 +0100, Petros Zimourtopoulos wrote:

> Any freeware, pleae, to format in ntfs with an alu of 512 bytes under windows 10 ?

The command line Format program in Win10 directly supports the allocation
unit size of 512 Bytes for NTFS. Because of the inherent maximum cluster
count limit of NTFS (2^32 - 1 clusters), you cannot format partitions
larger than 2 TByte this way.

Another way would be prior formatting the partition with FAT32 and the
allocation unit size of 512 Bytes. Afterwards, this partition can be
converted to NZFS using the Win10 command line Convert program. This
program preserves the FAT32 cluster size during convert. Because of the
maximum cluster count of FAT32 this approach is limited to partition
sizes up to 2 GByte.

As Shadow already pointed out, deviating from the recommended allocation
unit size is not recommended and (because of the way NTFS stores files
smaller than the allocation unit size) using small allocation units
provides no benefits.

BeAr
--
===========================================================================
= What do you mean with: "Perfection is always an illusion"? =
===============================================================--(Oops!)===

[pez]

=
0
=
| Saturday, February 19, 2022 18:49 PM
| pez:
| ...
| Any freeware, plea[s]e, to format in ntfs with an alu of 512

| bytes under windows 10 ?

| ...
=
=
1
=
| Saturday, February 19, 2022 22:06 PM
| Shadow:
| ...

| https://www.diskpart.com (AOMEI) has free formatting software.

| ...
=

Thank you.

ALU 4,096 B.

pez

=
2
| Sunday, February 20, 2022 02:16 AM
| Mike Dee:
| ...
| GParted perhaps? <https://gparted.org/livecd.php>
| ...
=

Thank you.

ALU of 4,096 B.

pez

=
3
| Sunday, February 20, 2022 08:17 AM
| B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson:
| The command line Format program in Win10 [...] you cannot

| format partitions larger than 2 TByte

| ...
| Another way [...] using the Win10 command line Convert [...]

| this approach is limited to partition sizes up to 2 GByte.

| ...

| As Shadow already pointed out, deviating from the recommended
| allocation unit size is not recommended and (because of the
| way NTFS stores files smaller than the allocation unit size)
| using small allocation units provides no benefits.

=

Thank you.

Here are the results:

Well, under W10 and after copying [with FastCopy, of course] for
about 3 days:

~ 5,400,000 files, and

~ 520,000 folders

to a HD of 4 TiB pre-formatted as FAT32, and excluding a few
files which are of greater than 4 GB in size, this resulted to:

1.82 TB : Size

2.94 TB : Size on disk

1.12 TB : Waste, that is

61.5 % of Size was wasted.

But today my wife found this:

https://lifehacker.com/format-a-usb-drive-as-ntfs-in-windows-xp-5195783

after of which I succeeded to format it under WXP32, with

ALU of 512 B.

How many days will the copying last ?

: )

Thank you all !

pez

[B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2022 22:13:34 +0100, pez wrote:

>| Sunday, February 20, 2022 08:17 AM
>| B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson:

[...]

>| As Shadow already pointed out, deviating from the recommended
>| allocation unit size is not recommended and (because of the
>| way NTFS stores files smaller than the allocation unit size)
>| using small allocation units provides no benefits.

[5.4 Million files with 1.82 TB size]
> to a HD of 4 TiB pre-formatted as FAT32 [...] this resulted to:
[...]

> 2.94 TB : Size on disk
>
> 1.12 TB : Waste, that is
>
> 61.5 % of Size was wasted.

Special storage method for small files occurs only with NTFS (and other
advanced file systems). With FAT32 every file will use up at least one
allocation unit. Therefore, your FAT32 numbers are oranges compared to
NTFS apples.