Drive format

If using Win XP, or earlier, PM is the better choice as it is oft available free, usually in a package of other Symantec products, AFTER rebate. Check at places such as www.outpost.com, www.buy.com, etc. Recently, I've seen a number of such offers.

PM does not work in Vista, and Symantec admits that. Indeed, just yesterday, I purchased my first Vista system. In anticipation, I purchased Disk Director 10.

Note: A few years ago, some folkes with a well known company, told me that they use DD, instead of PM, as they considered DD to be superior. I believe that such a recommendation is very reliable.

 

I have an ancient version of PM (4.01) and an ancient version of DD (from the Acronis OS Selector disk) neither of which is up-to-date enough to do on-the-fly cluster changes. Gosh I don't wanna buy another piece of sw to do this one task.

I'm thinking of using xcopy but it sounds ugly: make a 4096 partition on a spare disc, xcopy everything from C: to it. Pull the C: drive and insert the spare & test, then re-format the original drive and do the xcopy thing again. What makes this even trickier is that the drive with C: on it even has a 2nd partition (for video, created w/64K clusters!). So my setup currently has one part 512, another 64k, and a third 4096. Bleah!

Anyone with a better idea than xcopy

Yeah I know I should prolly buy the newest DD Suite or whatever it's called these days...

 

This is a critical area of system maintence.
Do not try to take shortcuts.

Using PM or DD is the proper way to change cluster sizes for an extant logical drive.

If pre-Vista, and you keep your eyes open, PM is periodically available free after rebates from places such www.frys.com, www.buy.com, etc.

I purchased DD for $34.99, no shipping charge, from www.newegg.com a few daze ago. THere may have been lower prices elsewhere, but I'll buy only from certain well known vendors.

 

Well, from what I have read xcopy will work, but it would clearly be a huge PIA I think. I decided to mailorder ADD 10 since it now has my old version 5.0 lapped! Should have it tomorrow already...I hope it works.

 

If you have a current TI backup image then there's very little risk in trying this. I still recommend running chkdsk /f on the partition after conversion, then defragmenting. The conversion leaves behind a bit of a mess.

DD 10 is worth having around regardless. I think you made the right decision.

 

OK, I got ADDS 10, and while I feel quite certain that I did a chkdsk before using it to do a cluster change from 512 to 4096 on my C: drive (using the boot CD process), afterwards Windows gave me a couple of BSODs and wanted to do another chkdsk, and it found two errors! The errors were with Display Drivers mnmdd.dll and rdpdd.dll, and I have my fingers crossed that these have been maybe interacting (interfering) with my ATI AGP card i.e. I've gotten odd BSODs for months since getting that card. Anyway chkdsk said it fixed the errors.

Yup Diskeeper showed the drive was heavily fragmented afterward and I let it defrag everything. Subsequently I have beaten-up on the PC including an overnight process and all seems well.

I don't know that "512-byte clusters" was specifically creating any problems for me (C: partition 512, D: partition 4096, E: partition 64K) but I'm glad to be "updated" and also glad I got ADDS 10 vs. trying the xcopy method. My old version 5.0 (which I think was a freebie way-back when I upgraded ATI) worked well enough but didn't have the cluster mod feature, and was buried in the "OS Selector" disk where I had to re-enter the Key each/every time I booted with it. So 10.0 is worth it just for that.

Thanks Mark for your words of caution and encouragement!

 

Good to know, laserfan.

I've done 3 or 4 cluster size conversions with DD 10 and each one has required a chkdsk /f operation afterwards to clean up some file system corruption. None of the conversions indicated any problems or produced any BSODs like you saw, however. I only noticed this after running a chkdsk and finding out that there were errors to correct. Otherwise, Windows ran fine immediately after conversion.

I think that you will find your disk I/O faster with 4 kB clusters instead of 512 B clusters.