NTFS runs every thing twice as slow

[jaxson]

.Hi every one could some one please help me. i have recently converted my fat 32 to ntfs. but now ive done that the boot speed has doubled. so has the log on speed for windows and every window and program lags and it estimtes finish times for programs ludicrusly wrong it said 31 days 14hours for one program it took in realitty 28 minutes. it just slow at every thing i have a 1ghz 396 ram 9.54 gb harddrive 5.90 is free there is no start up programs or uneccessery files any where i have deleted every thing not needed. was there something i should of done once i upgraded that would of helped. I have search the web but have found nothing that helped my problem .Thanks guys

[Dave22]

Here's a little blurb I found about your problem...

"I would first suspect that your performance issues are related to small NTFS cluster sizes on your hard drive. When a hard drive that was previously formatted with DOS tools (Fdisk and Format, creating FAT16 or FAT32 partitions) is converted to NTFS, there is frequently a problem that causes a tiny 512-byte cluster size under NTFS. That's the smallest cluster size NTFS allows. I won't go into a long explanation, but it's also the slowest cluster size. The solution is to convert the cluster sizes to at least 4K. Many, many people have reported that doing so solved their performance problems completely. Microsoft is aware of the problem, but really hasn't done much about it. It's also not warning people not to convert to NTFS on Windows 9x upgrades, which routinely result in 512-byte cluster sizes. This isn't just a Windows XP problem, either. Windows 2000 users face the same issue. It's also not just a problem for people who've upgraded to Windows XP and then converted to NTFS either. Even some new PCs -- including name brand models (especially in the early going right after Windows XP shipped) -- had this problem. The DOS-based software tools some PC makers use to image new hard drives are the culprit. If your new PC was purchased recently from a local system integrator, for example, you could have this problem. Most major PC makers have resolved this problem (on PCs sold in 2002), though."

Looks like you'll either need to reformat and load your OS as NTFS to begin with OR use something like Partition Magic to change your cluster size to something like 4096.

Remember to get a backup of your data before doing anything!

YMMV

[moonlight burner]

Hi Dave22, so are you saying by having a bigger cluster size-4KB instead of 512 Byte, the speed will improve ?

[Dave22]

It should.

Here's where that blurb came from if you're interested in reading the whole thing:

http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/19.htm#filesys

[moonlight burner]

Thanks !
The Link is a good read