Best disk allocation unit size for OS

[CyberDude]

I'm about to install XP. Therefore, I'm creating a partition for the OS.

What is the best allocation unit size?

 

[k1n9k00p4]

Personilly i have 3 partitions over 2 harddrive:

6GB for Windows XP (C
24GB for Installed apps and games (D
149GB for media (E

So as u can see i allocated 6GB for winXP and it seems to be fine, enough breething space for XP and enough space for drivers etc.

This is what works best for me.

 

[Nodsu]

k1n9k00p4 totally missed the point here.. An allocation unit is not a partition.

You should stick with the default 4K cluster size - this will allow you to use compressed folders (compression is not supported for anything above 4K). Also, the memory page size is 4K, so the swapfile will fit nicely with your filesystem.

Use bigger cluster sizes for data volumes with big files (a movie partition perhaps?) and smaller for zillions of files (an email server maybe?).

 

[CyberDude]

Thanks for the answer - it's a good idea to have a third partition for apps.

But actually I meant allocation size (512 byte, 1K, 2K, etc) . I think it is small (0.5 K or 1K), because of the many small files the OS has. Of course performance is the most important issue.

[Edit] NODSU beat me with his post

Do you think that 4K performs better than 512B? [/edit]