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Since I work in web development and bandwidth is always an issue, I make every effort to reduce the size of my files, especially images. As a result I have at least 10,000 files that are all around 200 bytes in size.
My hard drive's allocation unit size is 4 kB, which means that I am wasting a lot of space. When it comes to backing up in particular, I'd like to avoid wasting space.
What I'd like to know is what the downsides are to setting the smallest AU size. My main concern is what happens to 8 GB files if I have a 512-byte AU size?
IIRC, sustained reading speed is reduced, which is why if you were mainly dealing with very large files (eg. video editors) it would desirable to increase it. – paradroid – 2012-08-23T22:38:31.637
Oh, and also, by changing from the defaults, you are a bit more susceptible to incompatibility problems with certain software that directly accesses the hard drive, like disk cloning and backup software. – paradroid – 2012-08-23T22:41:28.170