Windows Large File Copy -- Reformat w/ large cluster size?

phuschnickens

I'm copying one single 34gb file to an external usb hdd... formatted NTFS... operating system is W2k3... this is a process that is repeated every tuesday... I've never really noticed the lagging of the server except in the last couple weeks it seems pretty slow while copying. I read something somewhere about reformatting the external drive with a larger cluster size b/c I'm copying such a large file to it. Will this help? If so what cluster size is recommended? Any other ideas?

Server has plenty of resources: 2 x quad core @ 2.33ghz and 4gb ram

Thanks for your help.

phu

EDIT: I forgot to mention something fairly relevant perhaps? Sometimes the copy fails with an error that reads something like "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested operation."

kryyst

Yes it will help, a cluster size of 4096 should be good, you can go bigger then that but then you run into other issues. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314878.