At 10:34 PM 6/29/1998 JIM MEAHGER wrote:
>
>And therein lies the crux of this matter.  Everyone's system is uniquely
>different because we all have a different mix of software.  There is no
>way to quantify how much space is wasted and have it apply to ANYthing
>other than that one single pc which is being measured.
>
>As I said in my previous post, the TOTAL amount of wasted space on a
>particular PC is determined the number of files AND their size as compared
>to the cluster size.


Gentle Readers:

As much as I like to optimize the space efficiency of my
drives, performance is much more vital. Hard drive real
estate is so cheap that a wasted 200 MBs in slack space
is practically meaningless. What is the cost, $15?

The larger clusters give better performance. Can you
picture a 160MB Permanent Windows Swap File running
on 4K clusters rather than 32K clusters (I admit hating
cluster sizes larger than 32K; also, I usually stay FAT16
for compatibility reasons). Think of the performance hit on
an IDE drive, which requires CPU use for disk management.

I always put dynamic files (software and often used files)
on large clusters partitions. Data goes to smaller cluster
partitions. In fact, unchangeable data gets burned onto
CD-ROMs.

So, the best way to save space on your hard drive? Weed
out the old files you don't need or can archive onto removable
media. That's where file management becomes imperative.

Regards,

John Chin