I just bought 32GB usb flash drive and i want to format it, but i dont know what default Allocation unit size for formating it and also i've no idea what it means.
Here a screenshot
I hope you guys can explain and help me decide which one should i choose. And sorry if this off topic. Thanks in advance.
The allocation size I'd use is 64KB. FAT32 formatting can't work with a file size of 4GB + 1Byte or larger, has to be NTFS. I haven't played with exFAT yet. Windows can't format more than 32GB as FAT32. When needing FAT32 I usually format 64GB and larger drives using Linux Mint or the bootable GPARTED LiveCD, have done 125GB and 250GB HDDs as FAT32 to use with my MacBook Pro as Mac OS X and the newer osMAC has problems with NTFS unless using a third-party software.
Basically, the allocation unit size is the block size on your hard drive when it formats NTFS (default 4096 bytes). If you have lots of small files, then it’s a good idea to keep the allocation size small so your harddrive space won’t be wasted. If you have lots of large files, keeping it higher will increase the system performance by having less blocks to seek.
For example:
with a 1 byte file size will occupy 4096 bytes if allocation unit is set to 4096 bytes while it will occupy 8192 bytes if you set it to 8182 bytes.
For flash drive. You can either format with NTFS or ExFat. However, NTFS on flash memory has been known to be inefficient. exFAT’s smaller footprint/overhead.
One more thing: If you want a UFD to be bootable and your system uses UEFI, you MUST use FAT32 for it to be recognized. And if it ain't recognized, it ain't gonna work, either...
HTH,
--Ed--
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