windows Formatting My External HDD

[SinfulRaevyn]

Hullo all

 

Okay, I normally try to self teach myself when it comes to using my PC, and tonight I am doing something new to an extent.

 

I bought an ACER 1TB External Hard Drive for storing music, movies and some games on as my other HDD was getting full.

 

My other HDD was for most of my games, but seeing as I have been getting a lot of steam stuff lately, I thought that I'd keep that HDD for only Steam items.

 

Tonight i tried to move some Emulator games over (ps2) to the new HDD and a few files wouldn't transfer because they were 'too big'. I discovered that my ACER hard drive was formatted in FAT32. YAY!

 

So now I want to format to NTFS so that I can put all my large emulator games on it.

 

Here is my issue!

 

When I right click and select format, there is a drop down box that reads: Allocation Unit Size.

 

The default option it sits on is 4096 bytes, but ranges between 512 bytes and 64kb.

 

What does this mean? Which option should I choose? Or should I leave it default?

 

Sorry, I feel like a ditz here, but it's always nice to learn something new.

[UAdave]

It's the cluster size. Larger sizes will give you better performance at the cost of overall storage space. Lower size will give you more space but less performance. If your drive is for storage its okay to go with the smaller size. For performance (aka your primary disk) it may be better to go bigger.

[SinfulRaevyn]

Well I tend to play games and watch movies off of the drive, so I may go bigger and sacrifice some space since it's 1TB anyhow.

 

Thank you for the answer! ^.^