Server 2012 NTFS boot disk cluster size
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Posted this over in the other place, figured might as well as my Mangolassi folks as well.
Here's one of those very strange and frankly asanine requests from people.
Customer wants a 64K NTFS cluster size across all of their disks. And I mean ALL of them, C:\ drive included. I've already said to put down the crack pipe, but apparently we are bending backwards on this.
Besides the obvious disk space issues and relatively useless on a drive with not a whole lot of giant files, I need some info to back this up. Microsoft doesn't have any yea or nay on it that I can find. I know it's possible to do, but I don't know of any legitimate Microsoft procedure to do so. So the questions are and maybe someone has some supporting documentation backing this up:
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Is this a supported configuration for Windows Server 2012?
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Is there a supported Microsoft method to changing the C:\ cluster size from 4K to 64K without loss of data or reinstalling?
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@PSX_Defector
Not sure if this will help or not..- By default, the maximum cluster size for NTFS under Windows NT 4.0 and later versions of Windows is 4 kilobytes (KB). This is because NTFS file compression is not possible on drives that have a larger cluster size. The format command won't use clusters larger than 4 KB unless the user specifically overrides the default settings. You can do this by using the /A: switch together with the Format command or by specifying a larger cluster size in the Format dialog box in Windows Explorer.
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I know some people do some odd stuff with the newer adavced format hard drives (512e). But they are special use case. I'm not really sure why you'd want to do that.
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I'd love to see how you do that without destroying data/reinstalling?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I'm not really sure why you'd want to do that.
Ultra-specific use case for giant files on a uber-well-researched raid controller?
So.... never.
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There are third party utilities that will do it. But I need an official Microsoft method of doing it. And if it's nuke and pave, then it's nuke and pave.
I'm not even sure the nuke and pave method is legit as well, as it requires all kinds of fun interrupting of the installation process to make it happen.
That's why I'm in search of anything Microsoft. My google-fu fails me.
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@PSX_Defector said:
There are third party utilities that will do it. But I need an official Microsoft method of doing it. And if it's nuke and pave, then it's nuke and pave.
I'm not even sure the nuke and pave method is legit as well, as it requires all kinds of fun interrupting of the installation process to make it happen.
That's why I'm in search of anything Microsoft. My google-fu fails me.
You don't have to interrupt the install process, boot into recover mode, I think there is a format utility in there.
