Depends. When i set up a pro audio or a pro video editing workstation for a customer, I set the cluster size on a single drive to 64K... Since most files are huge anyway, you get a very slight performance increase when reading and writing gigantic file chunks. But for average use, I would say no benefit or downside either. It really doesn't matter.
Umm at least for my system, I answered my own question in at least one scenario comparison, for one benchmark. Default it is. This is a WD 40G 8MB cache, primary IDE, used for some smaller programs/utilities and some storage. The OS and games/main programs are in RAID0 on Raptors, still compiling ATTO's on those partitions.
Cluster size depends entirely upon what is on that drive or partition. The default cluster size is a variable of drive or partition size and file system. (FAT 16, 32 or NTFS)
That first ATTO looks lik you were folding while running the bench.
Or had upgraded a fat32 partiton and had 512 cluster to start with even. The first one was so sucky it isnt fair to compare as it had other issues. The two atto's are not showing just a cluster change unless it was really screwed before messing with it.
When I went from 4k clusters to 32k clusters on 9x my HD speed rocketed. But when trying the same with NTFS I didn't get any performance boost at all....
Comments
Did any good, no
See here
Which is a better cluster size depends on what files are going on that drive or partition.
EG: a wide range of small and large files such as an OS, an application or a game
OR
Is it something like a lot media files that are a lot of single files 10, 20 or 50 MB and larger?
Here is another interesting read on NTFS and FAT32. The only way to truly see is to try then benchmark using at least two different programs.
That first ATTO looks lik you were folding while running the bench.
Or had upgraded a fat32 partiton and had 512 cluster to start with even. The first one was so sucky it isnt fair to compare as it had other issues. The two atto's are not showing just a cluster change unless it was really screwed before messing with it.
Tex
NS