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Originally Posted by k0lo
1. You cannot convert an existing Vista partition to a cluster size of 16k; after conversion it will not boot.
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Correct in all the tests I ran.
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2. Vista will only boot from an NTFS partition with a 4k cluster size.
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Vista seems to only want to boot from a Vista created (or, at least, formatted) 4K NTFS Primary partition. I have not run extensive tests with DD, but every time I tried using a DD created and formatted partition, it didn't work.
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3. If installing Vista from scratch you can create a small boot partition with a 4k cluster size, make it active, and then install Vista to a larger partition with 16k cluster size. You can direct the Vista installer to install to the larger partition and it will automatically install the boot files to the active partition. You will end up with a Vista partition with 16k cluster size that will boot from the small partition with 4k cluster size.
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Correct. If you use DD to create the partitions, use Diskpart (or Vista's Format) to reformat the boot partition.
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4. For converting an existing installation of Vista to 16k clusters you can create a small primary NTFS partition and move the files required for booting (\bootmgr and the \Boot directory) to the small boot partition, make the partition active and make it bootable. BCD repairs will be needed to get Vista to boot properly. Then the original Vista partition can be converted to cluster sizes other than 4 kB.
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Correct. Also, remove the \BOOT folder and the bootmgr file from the Vista partition (this may not be necessary, but I did it so Vista wouldn't find any "stray" files). The only BCD repair needed was to relink the bootmgr partition. I have only tried 16K clusters, so, for my part, it's just an assumption that other sizes would also work.