hard drive - OS partition has 512 bytes clusters, should I convert to 4k?

07
2014-07
  • ICTAddict

    I made a mistake and formatted the OS partition with 512 bytes cluster size, thinking that this will save a lot of space when storing small files (That was a long time ago, I didn't know that it will increase fragmentation) So my question is: Should I change it to 4096 bytes to reduce this fragmentation problem (and possibly increase speed) or it's not worth it?

    Note: I restored this OS from a backup to a new HDD less than 3 weeks ago and now I'm defragging it (12% fragmented). Seems high for me.

    • Answers
  • Fazer87

    Whether you get fragmentation for a drive or not really depends on your usage. If you are aggressively writing, deleting and re-writing data a lot, then fragmentation can become a problem.

    12% fragmentation isn't hugely high, but its above what my drive is - and I've not defragged for a couple of months at least.

    The simplest answer is that if you are a heavy user - convert! Whether you qualify as a heavy user or not is a question only you can answer - but by converting, you can't damage and can potentially get an improvement in service.


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    windows 7 - Hard disk with bad clusters
  • Dan

    I have been trying to backup some files up to DVD recently, and the burn process failed saying the CRC check failed for certain files. I then tried to browse to these files in Windows Explorer my whole machine locks up and I have to reboot.

    I ran checkdisk without the '/F /R' arguments and it told me I had bad sectors. So I re-ran it with the arguments and check disk fails during the 'Chkdsk is verifying usn journal' stage with this error:

    Insufficient disk space to fix the usn journal $j data stream

    The hard disk is a 300 GB Partition on a 400 GB Disk, and there is 160 GB of free space on the partition. My OS (Windows 7) is installed on the other partition and is running fine.

    Any idea how I fix this? Or repair it enough to copy my files off it?


    • Related Answers
  • Fred

    Your drive vendor may have disk repair tools on the vendor website. I've had good luck with SpinRite fixing disks with bad sector errors.

  • CJM

    First of all, I'd copy all the data that you are able to different physical drive - and I'd include anything of value on the OS partition. Although the disk could plod along happily for ages, it could equally collapse tomorrow; in addition, any recovery process will be risky. So rescue what you can immediately.

    Next step I would try is to boot into the recovery console and run chkdsk /r from there - /r assumes that /f is required, so you don't need to specify /f explicitly.

    You could also try scrapping the USN Journal first:

    fsutil usn deletejournal /D driveletter

    It will automatically be recreated when you run chkdsk.

    There are no guarantees that this will get you any further, but it's worth trying...

  • chris

    Back up the data NOW, then run smartmontools to see what's happening with the drive. This should help identify any hardware problems. The corrupt files may not be salvageable.