Format cluster size for Recorded TV 4TB HDD

[Paul Anderegg]

I just purchased a new WD Gold 4TB 128MB 7200rpm HDD for my Media Center PC. It is replacing a 3TB Seagate Constellation 7200rpm "Class action lawsuit edition".

I am curious as to what default allocation unit size I should select when formatting the new drive as NTFS. I am looking PRIMARILY for as low latency as possible when skimming forward on playback of recorded MCE TV/video files. With the Seagate, when I skip ahead 30 seconds, there is around a 1 second pause before the program continues playing. The hardest this drive will be worked (NVME for the OS) would be to be recording 6 HD TV shows at once, while simultaneously playing back a 7th.

With all that prolonged writing taking place, of files between 2GB and 10GB in size, with simultaneous playback, is there a good recommendation of cluster size that would keep my PRIMARY goal of lowest latency and response for playback satisfied? I am not sure how this works but assuming the heads might be bouncing allover the platters, so figured I would ask the experts in the community.

Paul

[Crash2009]

It's been awhile since I installed my WD replacement for the Seagate lawsuit model, As I recall I set the Bios to AHCI. Then when I got into disk management in windows, right click and convert to GPT. I don't remember trying to adjust the default allocation size

You might need to update the bios on the motherboard also.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... b=5&auth=1

[stuartm]

I just purchased a new WD Gold 4TB 128MB 7200rpm HDD for my Media Center PC. It is replacing a 3TB Seagate Constellation 7200rpm "Class action lawsuit edition".

I am curious as to what default allocation unit size I should select when formatting the new drive as NTFS. I am looking PRIMARILY for as low latency as possible when skimming forward on playback of recorded MCE TV/video files. With the Seagate, when I skip ahead 30 seconds, there is around a 1 second pause before the program continues playing. The hardest this drive will be worked (NVME for the OS) would be to be recording 6 HD TV shows at once, while simultaneously playing back a 7th.

With all that prolonged writing taking place, of files between 2GB and 10GB in size, with simultaneous playback, is there a good recommendation of cluster size that would keep my PRIMARY goal of lowest latency and response for playback satisfied? I am not sure how this works but assuming the heads might be bouncing allover the platters, so figured I would ask the experts in the community.

Paul

I would advise formatting with the largest cluster size. Video is large sequential data. You want to read/write as big a chunk of data as possible. This minimizes potential seeks. i.e. 8k cluster means up to 8 seeks to read 64k, 64k cluster means max of one seek. I always format my recording storage disks with max cluster size. I don't usually have more than 3 or 4 streams recording/watching but I have never noticed any objectionable delay on forward skip. Delay is probably more attributable to having to re-sync to a start frame in the video stream.