Re: Cluster Sizes on FAT partitions?

["Randal J. Whittle" <whittle@usc.edu>]

At 12:23 AM 1/13/96 -0500, you wrote:

>The following was posted in one of the news groups that I follow:
>
>0 - 128         2k
>129 - 256       4k                 
>257 - 512       8k
>513 - 1 gig     16k
>>1 gig          32k
>
>The original poster said that he had gotten the info off of the 
>Western Digital web site at some point in the past.  You might check
>there just to be sure.

        Thanks Michael.  I checked Western Digital's Web site, and the
information you provided is indeed accurate.  To wit, this is what I got
from the web site in some FAQ buried umpteen layers deep... ;-)  Here goes:

---------------
QUOTE MODE ON:

17: How come I'm getting a message that I am out of disk space after
loading in 800 mb of data when I have a 1 GB drive?

In DOS, every file that is stored gets at least one allocation unit (called
a "cluster") no matter what the
size of the file is. The size of the cluster grows incrementally with the
size of the partition. If you have
a 1.08 gig partition, the cluster size will be 32k. This means that even a
62 byte batch file is going to
consume 32k of storage space (the difference between the 32k of the cluster
and the 22 bytes that
the file really needs is called "slack space"). The only feasible way to
reduce the cluster size is to
reduce the partition size. The break down for DOS 4 and above is as follows: 

          0 - 128        2k 
        129 - 256        4k 
        257 - 512        8k 
        513 - 1 GB      16k 
            > 1 GB      32k

-----------
QUOTE MODE OFF


(Just in case anyone is interested...)


I'm just glad to find out the cluster size stuff doesn't get any worse than
32K in size!  I had visions of it going up into the 64K and 128K size ranges...
Randy Whittle		whittle@usc.edu