What does the size of the allocation unit when formatting a mechanical hard disk mean?

Many friends encounter the formatting allocation unit size when formatting a mechanical hard disk or USB disk. What does it mean? And what is the appropriate allocation unit size? Generally, the default allocation size is selected, then the default size What is it? Generally, different systems have different default values. Let’s take a look at the specific introduction below.

Introduction to allocation unit size for mechanical hard disk formatting

Allocation unit, formerly known as cluster. It is the space size divided by the operating system for each unit address. For example, if a building is divided into several rooms, each room is the same size, and each room is given a room number. At this time, each room The size is the allocation unit. When creating a partition, the option of allocation unit size will appear.

Each allocation unit can only store one file. The file is divided into several blocks and stored on the disk according to the size of this allocation unit. For example, a 512-byte file, when the allocation unit is 512 bytes, occupies 512 bytes of storage space; a 513-byte file, when the allocation unit is 512 bytes, it occupies 1024 bytes of storage space. Storage space, but when the allocation unit is 4096, it will occupy 4096 bytes of storage space. Generally speaking, the smaller the allocation unit, the more space it saves. The larger the allocation unit, the more time it saves reading, but it wastes space. This may seem like a smaller allocation unit can save space, but this is not the case. The more blocks a file is divided into, especially when these storage units are scattered, it will waste some time when reading the data. You can imagine that the time is so long when the magnetic head is struggling to move the disk for bit by bit of data. wasted.

Therefore, I recommend that you keep the system's default allocation unit size.

For example, let’s see if you can understand

The floor area of ​​your home = partition capacity

Your home plans to lay floor tiles. It is equal to the allocated unit size

Both large-sized and small-sized tiles can cover your home, so what is the difference between large and small?

The disk does not write files one by one, it is divided into countless grids. A file is continuously written on the disk. In the last grid where the file is written, no matter whether there is still space in this grid, if the file is changed, a new file will be written in another grid.

Small size does not waste disk, space utilization High, the speed is slower

Large size is fast, but space is easily wasted

It depends on your format. If it is a fast format, you can retrieve it

If it is a slow format It’s completely gone

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