Hard Drive block sizes

[Anonymous]

With using DTT devices and streaming to media servers and editing large video files.

Is it a good idea to use software like Partition Magic to resize hard drive block sizes for example to 32K or 64K depending on size of the hard drive or partition used for video DTT, editing and streaming. This is with having a complete NTFS pc and hard drives. Or is it better to leave them block sizes at 4K.

Would like to make all partitions and drives faster for transfers like copying and streaming. While using another partition for saving DTT broadcast streams which are flagged as upto 15mbps but vrd shows them no more than 4mbps.

I normaly use 30-40gig for a partition.

[Anole]

I hadn't considered block size as a factor. Maybe something to think about.

For maximum throughput on my system (an AMD Barton running about 2100mhz actual clock), I rely on two 160gb SATA hard drives.
In the past, I would have considered putting them in raid, but the stress of video editing and authoring demand TWO drives for best performance.
I put source material on one drive, use the QuickStream Fix feature and save to the other.
Then, I edit from the second drive and save back to the first.
For convenience, I often save as .mpg and again as .mpa/mpv.

For authoring, I input from the first drive and save output to the second.
Managing this may seem a bit difficult, especially when I have a lot of movies (or TV episodes) in play at once, but the throughput improvement is enormous!
Also less wear on the drive, and less defragging to do - which you should probably do daily, if you're into heavy editing/authoring!

As for partition size, I have a few small partitions for the system and programs, then have about 140gb as a single partition on the boot drive.
The second 160gb drive is a single partition.

If I could think of a better way to organize things, I would do it, but this has proven an optimal configuration.

Oh, and one last thing, neither Windows 2000 (which I use) nor Windows XP will use more than 136 gb of a large drive without some retuning of the system.
This is a whole 'nother discussion, which I won't go into in this message, but there are fixes, which should be looked into if using any drive above 140gb.

[Anonymous]

I hadn't considered block size as a factor. Maybe something to think about.
Block sizes <> Cluster sizes - I thought i'd point this out when i said Block sizes :wink:

Some info i found on this from the microsoft site
Optimizing NTFS Performance (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_punq.asp)
NTFS Performance Factors (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/winntas/tips/winntmag/optntfs.mspx)