Best file allocation size fat32

I am so grateful for the bounty. As far as how the sector size affects disk space usage, the Wikipedia article File Allocation Table - FAT32 has this calculation : The boot sector uses a bit field for the sector count, limiting the FAT32 volume size to 2 TiB for a sector size of bytes and 16 TiB for a sector size of 4, bytes.

Therefore any sector size will allow the usage of your entire disk space. Your choice should be : If you have lots of small files, choose a suitable sector size to contain the majority of the files unlikely for mp3 files Otherwise, stay with the default sector size of 4KB.

Even if most of your files are much larger than 4KB, you will not gain anything from a larger sector size. Furthermore, the larger the sector size, the more disk space is lost as unused, since, statistically speaking, about half of the last sector of such a file will be allocated but never used.

Sector size of 4KB is the most widely used size and so may be better supported on more devices. Community Bot 1. Jimbot Jimbot 1 1 silver badge 5 5 bronze badges. You can use anything you want and it will work. See below Performance loss The physical sector size is the minimum amount of data a drive can read or write. Sacha K Sacha K 2 2 gold badges 9 9 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges. Compatibility with non-PC devices will be increased by choosing the default 4kB.

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Linked Related 5. Hot Network Questions. How to check and change allocation unit size of SD card? Check allocation unit size of SD card To check the current cluster size of your SD card partition, you can follow the steps below: Step 1. Change allocation unit size of SD card Warning: The allocation unit size can be changed via formatting, which will cause data loss.

You can change cluster size easily within Windows Explorer. Step 3. Still Need Help? Set the file system to exFAT and choose a cluster size from the drop-down menu according to your needs and then click OK. Step 4. Preview the changes you just made. At last, click the Apply button to allow the change. Buy Now. Command Prompt , is also known as CMD, is the command-line interpreter available in Windows operating system. It can help you perform a lot of operations to solve various Windows problem and manage disks and partitions.

If you are familiar with Windows 10 Command Prompt, You can also use Command Prompt to format your partition and change its allocation unit size with commands. Just follow the steps below. Step 1 : Type cmd in the Windows 10 Cortana search box and right click the best match Command Prompt to select Run as administrator.

Step 2 : In the Command Prompt window, type diskpart and hit Enter. Step 3 : then type the following commands one by one and hit Enter after each:. After the above commands are executed successfully, you can store files to the exFAT partition with the new allocation unit size.

Click to tweet. After reading this post, now you should know what allocation unit size you should use for exFAT partition and how to change exFAT allocation unit size or cluster size with two different methods. If you have any good idea on allocation unit size for exFAT format or if you have any question about how to change cluster size exFAT with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, you can leave a message on the following comment zone and we will reply as soon as possible.

If you need any help when using MiniTool software, you can contact us via [email protected]. Download Partition Wizard. Summary : Which allocation unit size should you use for an exFAT partition? NTFS vs. This tool is designed for partition management.

Step 2. Step 4. Now the converting process will start automatically. Wait until the operation process is finished. Hope this article could solve all your questions about "what allocation unit size should I use for FAT32".

You can select the appropriate size by referring to the table in this article. Roxanne is one of the main contributors to EaseUS and has created multiple posts on digital devices like PCs, Mobile phones, tablets, Mac, etc. She loves to share ideas with people of the same interest. Gemma is member of EaseUS team and has been committed to creating valuable content in fields about file recovery, partition management, and data backup etc for many years.

She loves to help users solve various types of computer related issues. It makes it way easier to play out what will happen after you've made all the changes.