Wasted Space

The wasted space is the amount of space in clusters on your hard disk that are not entirely filled. Keep the following formula in mind: size + wasted space = allocated space. Windows 9x with its file system FAT32 may have very large cluster sizes, depending on the partition size.

FAT32
Partition Size	Default Cluster Size
01 - 08 GB	4 KB
08 - 16 GB	8 KB
16 - 32 GB	16 KB
>32 GB	32 KB

If you have for example a single FAT32 partition on a 32GB hard disk, you have a cluster size of 32KB on it. If you store 10 files of 1 KB on this partition, this would use 10*32KB=320KB of your hard disk space, and 320KB - 10KB = 310KB would be wasted. Especially a huge number of small files significantly increases the amount of wasted space on FAT partitions.

To reduce the wasted space, there are the following possibilities:

•	Avoid using the FAT32 file system on partitions larger than 16GB.

•

Windows 2000 and later versions provide the possibility to format your hard disk with the NTFS file system. It usually operates with 512 - 4096 Byte clusters and has the best storage efficiency of all Windows file systems. Furthermore NTFS is able to compress selected directory branches. NTFS partitions cannot be accessed from Windows 9x or DOS without use of 3rd party software.