Hello Dave,

>-< On 27 Jul 99, at 23:10, I wrote:

> The block size is always a factor since it is a great waste of memory
> and disk space to use 1-sector clusters for very large drives;

>-< and you commented about this on 28 Jul 99:

DG>   On PC drives, one sector is always 512 bytes (0.5K).  I'm not certain that
DG> any PC hard drive format allows for clusters that are only a single sector.
I'm not certain, either. Maybe FAT32 does.

DG>   Perhaps you meant that there will always be some waste with any format
DG> where clusters are more than one sector?
And on floppy, too [512 bytes sector, no clusters] : try creating 3000
1-byte files... This will fill up your 1.44 Mb disk: [3k x 512 = 1536k > 1440k]
taking real size only 3 k... looks like 99.791% wasted space 8-(

This example is very artificial, of course, but here's a real-life one :
UFO 1 [X-COM] by Microprose : 30Mb "net weight", 1500 files, a lot of files ranging
5 to 400 bytes of size - took me 45-50Mb on FAT16 drive.

DG>   [On average, the wasted space per file will be half of a cluster, so many
DG> files (even/especially small ones) with a large cluster size makes for a
DG> *lot* of waste.]
Roger Roger.

DG>   Even though FAT32 clusters are larger than one sector, they don't need to
DG> get any bigger over the current range of typical partition sizes.  SO the
DG> important thing is that several small FAT32 partitions will waste just as
DG> much space as one big one.
Practically, more important is the opposite : one big FAT32 partition
will waste just as much space as several small FAT32/16 partitions.

+=-.
| Max Timchenko [MaxVT]
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+=-.

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