Acronis os selector 8.0 User Manual

8.5 Resizing

Clusters/Blocks

Resizing clusters/blocks is not a stand-alone operation as it is in other similar
programs. Instead Acronis OS Selector combines it with the create, copy,
move and resize partition functions, as this allows the performance of several
different actions on a partition in one pass.

The word «cluster» is used for Microsoft file systems: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS.
The word «block» is used for all other file systems.

Reducing cluster/block size may significantly reduce disk space waste since
any file, even the smallest one, occupies at least one cluster/block on the
disk. But reducing the cluster size for FAT32 may increase waste due to
increasing the size of the file allocation table, and could also slow down file
access.

For an existing partition, Disk Administrator can change the cluster size only
for FAT16/FAT32 file systems. For NTFS and Linux Ext2/Ext3 file systems it is
possible to choose the size of a cluster/block only when creating or
formatting a partition.

When choosing the cluster size it is necessary to know that NTFS partitions with

clusters larger than 4 KB do not support file compression.

Cluster/block size can be chosen on a special sheet of the partition resizing
(creation, converting, copying, moving, and formatting) dialog.

For each possible cluster/block size the Disk Administrator shows the
following information:

•  Minimum and maximum partition size.
•  Waste.
•  «Larger»/«Smaller» flag appears when it is necessary to

increase/decrease partition size in order to be able to change the
cluster/block size.