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From: csbrod@medusainformatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Big logical sectors and their effects
Message-ID: <3387@medusainformatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Date: 17 Dec 90 12:13:18 GMT
References: <1990Dec13.141210.26853@wam.umd.edu>
Organization: CSD, University of Erlangen, W-Germany
Lines: 25

dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett) writes:

>What effect does changing the logical sector size have on the system?
>Does it increase minimal file size?  E.g., if I create a 10 byte file,
>will it take up 8K on the disk, since the sector is the smallest
>unit of space that can be allocated?

When boosting the sector size up to 8 KB, the minimal file size is
16 KB when using 2 sectors per cluster (standard case), and a _cluster_
is the smallest unit of space to be allocated.

>Will a large sector size decrease performance?  Confuse applications
>of any kind?  

Large sectors probably won't hurt performance. I haven't done any exact
measurements on that one yet. Many disk editors don't know about big
logical sectors yet but are being adapted. Application software
doesn't need to know about things like this and therefore runs
unaffected.

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Claus Brod, Am Felsenkeller 2,			Things. Take. Time.
D-8772 Marktheidenfeld, West Germany		(Piet Hein)
csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
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