This is normally no noticeable delay, but can turn into a minor problem, if an operating system is running on that disk, and needs access to many files and huge amounts of data in real-time.īut a larger cluster size results into fewer clusters holding more data, which makes it easier, thus faster for the computer to handle. There is no head that needs to jump to and seek the data block position LBA (logical block address) of where the file continues.
SDD, SD, USB) have closely zero access times and no moving parts, file fragmentation is less of a problem there. You may try out a few, but the default 4 KB (4096 Bytes) is the most likely size to be supported.īecause flash drives (i.e. It is possible, that specific devices suffer from compatibility problems with exotic cluster sizes.
FAT32 is the default and most commonly supported USB file system for embedded systems such as car radios and USB HiFi, Boomboxes for your music. for 4KB cluster size: 4096, 8192, 12288, 16384, 20480, n×4096, etc…), and the next cluster after the file is already used by a different file, fragmentation happens. If a file grows beyond any single/multiplied cluster size (e.g. But that is also an ancient problem due to extremely developing storage sizes. The latter one, and possibly both for instance are able to store multiple small files in one cluster. Newer and more modern file systems such as BtrFS and ext4 have more efficient ways of handling it. Even an empty file would take the full block size on FAT32. Feel free to use the pre-selected cluster size, which is usually 4 KB (4096 Bytes). 
In today's world, it makes no noticeable difference as it did decades ago. Large cluster sizes rather match large files. 
Small cluster sizes are more suitable for many small files such as documents and plain text. It depends on what kind of data you are intending to store on the device.įor all data storage media types at all sizes:
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