How do I check NTFS cluster size?

[JustGeorge]

Is there a way to determine what cluster size an NTFS volume is formatted in?

[Blazkowicz]

yes, run chkdsk and it'll tell you. such as, if I run it on my C: partition I get this

3987395 KB total disk space.

1674800 KB in 14548 files.

4176 KB in 1582 indexes.

0 KB in bad sectors.

38767 KB in use by the system.

22000 KB occupied by the log file.

2269652 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.

996848 total allocation units on disk.

567413 allocation units available on disk.

[JustGeorge]

But doesn't inly show that info during a boot-time scan and then only for your Windows drive?

[Blazkowicz]

open a CMD window then you can run chkdsk whenever you want and on whatever drive.. (type chkdsk d: for instance)

[JustGeorge]

Ah okay, thanks :)

[+BudMan MVC]

Another quick and dirtry method! is to create a file with say 1 character in it -- and look at the size on disk ;)

edit: Another quick an easy method.. that only takes a couple of seconds to run vs how long chkdsk takes, plus lots more info grab ntfsinfo from sysinternals (FREE tool)..

C:\tools>ntfsinfo c:

NTFS Information Dump

Copyright ? 1997 Mark Russinovich

http://www.ntinternals.com

Volume Size

-----------

Volume size : 9995 MB

Total sectors : 20471792

Total clusters : 2558974

Free clusters : 479924

Free space : 1874 MB (18% of drive)

Allocation Size

----------------

Bytes per sector : 512

Bytes per cluster : 4096 <--- Info your after

Bytes per MFT record : 1024

Clusters per MFT record: 0

MFT Information

---------------

MFT size : 130 MB (1% of drive)

MFT start cluster : 315

MFT zone clusters : 2375392 - 2503072

MFT zone size : 498 MB (4% of drive)

MFT mirror start : 20975

Meta-Data files

---------------

Edited August 22, 2006 by BudMan

[JustGeorge]

Excellent tips, thanks again :)