by having two or more differnt sizes of clusters on a drive, you can manage space more efficiently - this would mean that all your system files would waste less space yet the file allocation table wouldn't have too many blocks to make it slow or unusable.
-- joltrushsoon, Mar 05 2000

Apple's HFS Plus http://developer.ap...otes/tn/tn1150.html
[johan, Mar 05 2000]

Um, most filesystems already do this. Unix filesystems typically have "blocks" and "fragments", for example. It's only lame, legacy-ridden (read: DOS) filesystems that are limited to a single cluster size.

Or do I misunderstand your idea?
-- egnor, Mar 05 2000


Apple introduced better disk space management in MacOS 8.1 (Shipped about Jan 1998?) I added a link. Look at the section called "Efficient Use of Disk Space."
-- johan, Mar 06 2000


just to make one thing clear - when i said 'drive', i meant 'partition'
-- joltrushsoon, May 15 2000


Completely baked.

Whether it's called a drive or a partition, most file systems allow for variable cluster sizes.
-- BigThor, Aug 04 2000


@BigThor Ok, it's been 10 years and I've yet to hear of a filesystem that uses multiple cluster sizes on the same volume. Otoh, I don't see what benefit that could possibly give.
-- orbik, May 18 2010


If each physical track was defined as a cluster to the file-system, then that would be perfect for media files and archives. [edit: cylinder, not track, thanks [supercat]]
-- FlyingToaster, May 19 2010


orbik, BigThor, johan:

HFS Plus, like many systems, allows for different volumes to have different cluster sizes; any particular volume is limited to a single size.

Personally, I would like to see a file system subdivided into a "big files" area and a "small files" area. The "big files" area would be mapped as one cluster per cylinder; the "small files" area would be mapped normally. The partition between the two halves could shift depending upon the contents of the volume.
-- supercat, May 20 2010



random, halfbakery