also...
if you format a drive to have 512byte blocks, you loose part of the 512bytes with header/pointer information. the smaller the block size, the more headers, the more diskspace lost. so a 2Kbyte block formated disk looses one quarter the disk space compaired to a 512byte block formatted disk. sounds great huh? but wait a minute. a file cannot be smaller than one disk block, and a block cannot contain more than one file. so a 512byte file saved to a 2Kbyte block, leads to 1.5Kbytes of empty (slack) space that can't be used by anything else.
also, if you have a few massive blocks, even if you have lost of disk space left, if all the blocks are used up, you won't be able to save anything to the drive.
most the time thats why "file size" and "size on disk" is different. size on disk takes into account all the 'slack' space used by incompletely filled blocks, plus the block headers.
so you have to weigh it all up.
if you have a disk that is going to have a few massive files on it, its best to use a large block size, as you get more disk space back, and the drive has less indexing work to do, meaning its a bit faster, especially in a serial read/write scenario (aka video recording/playback).
if you have lots of tiny files, you really want a small block size so you don't waste disk space with lots of 'slack' space.
i know with todays massive drives, its not so much the concern it once was when we were piddling about with drives in the tens to hundereds of megabytes. but it can make a difference with drive performance, and percieved capacity.
ok so you accept that your nice 1000GB drive is counted in decimal, so you plug it in and accept the 50GB+ loss in actual capcity, but you then loose another what, 9Gb in formating? yay!
sorry for the essay... bored... lol :lol:
