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I've read a few things here and there about hard drive cluster sizes and how it can help get more space out of a hard drive if the cluster size is set to maximum in case of very few very large files (databases, I presume). Those sources usually mention Linux and server usage. But what about a home computer on Windows?
I think it's possible to figure out how much space you can free up if you change the cluster size on any existing hard drive, but I'm not sure what it would mean for IO performance. Some sources mention that certain hard drives are optimized for standard (4K) cluster size and will read/write significantly slower if it is changed.
Is there a tool or some way to test if changing cluster size of one of your hard drives would improve performance and/or free up a bit of space?
I actually have an SSD for my OS drive. Would a non-standard block size change anything on it? – user1306322 – 2016-01-22T03:12:22.473
SSD have no blocks size. They are physically differently built, there is nothing that you can do to configure it faster or different. – Aganju – 2016-01-22T03:20:51.123
@Aganju SSDsare even more sensitive to a misconfigured filesystem allocation unit size. Windows will use the safest options which work 90% ofthe time. If you want to really try to get the SSD filesystem perfect, you must look for the erase block size of the SSD at the very least, and try to align the allocation unit size to this size. Use the linux tool https://github.com/bradfa/flashbench to try to measure the SSDs physical properties. note YMMV.
– Hydranix – 2016-01-22T04:28:59.333