Does
FAT32 affect system performance ?
!!
NO !!
To quote the Microsoft Knowledge
Base article referenced below:
"For most users, FAT32
will have a negligible performance impact. Some programs may
see a slight performance gain from FAT32. In other programs,
particularly those heavily dependent on large sequential read
or write operations, FAT32 may result in a modest performance
degradation." I do not
agree with this statement !
Basically, the more clusters on your hard
drive, the slower the performance. This is true for any file
system, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, HPFS, whatever. However, since FAT32
allows for many more clusters on a single partition than FAT16,
the effect may be noticable. Disk utilities are especially affected
(slower) the more clusters in the partition. For instance, the
closer to 8GB your partition gets, the more 4K clusters, and
the slower the performance. (However, as your partition gets
bigger, your slack vs. FAT16 improves.)
In preliminary benchmark testing, FAT32
and FAT16 benchmark roughly the same (within 2% either way) when
partition size and cluster size are the same. (Note that in order
to create a FAT32 partition with the same cluster size as FAT16,
the /Z switch must be used when formatting.) However, when cluster
sizes are made smaller and the number of clusters increases (only
possible with FAT32), disk performance degrades.
Thus there is a battle between slack and
performance: Small clusters mean less slack but worse performance.
Large clusters mean more slack but better performance. Most users
will notice slack differences much more than performance differences
caused by varying cluster sizes. Microsoft has decided for us
(in making 4K the default cluster size for FAT32) that 4K clusters
is the best balance between slack and performance. However, with
the /Z switch on the FORMAT command, the user has the ability
to decide for his/herself what cluster sizes should be, based
on the user's concerns about slack vs. performance.
Read the table below for choosing the cluster
size on basis of disk size for better performance and limiting
slack space.
Best recommended
Cluster size for your drive
|
Disk Size |
Cluster Size Recommended |
Format Command Option* |
|
Less than 1 GB |
4 KB |
Format x: |
|
Less than 4 GB |
8 KB |
Format x: /z:16 |
|
Between 4 to 32
GB |
16 KB ** |
Format x: /z:32 |
*x: is the drive i.e. e.g.
for c drive it is format c:
** 16 KB Cluster Size is
best for space savings and performance, even faster than FAT16.
My drive runs on FAT32 with cluster size of 16 KB and Sysinfo
by Norton Utilities 3.0 gives me cached read/write benchmark
of 75 MB and 6 MB physical read/write speed compared to 57 MB
and 5.1 MB on FAT16 (with 2GB partitions and cluster size of
32 KB) respectively on Seagate Medallist 4.3 GB.
TIPS :-
The APM (Advance Power
Management) "feature" of OSR2, and which spins down
the hard disk when inactive, also results in slower performance.
To turn off APM, go to Control Panel > Power and uncheck the
"Allow Windows to manage power use on this computer"
box.
Also increase buffers in
your config.sys in root of your boot drive to say 60 or above.
If file is not there create it in C:\ (assuming C is your boot
drive) with following lines :
BUFFERS=65
You will definitely
see increase in booting speed. If you have ton’s of RAM
64 MB+ add following line in your autoexec.bat (it should be
at the first line). This will increase the boot up speed of the
system considerably.
@C:\windows\smartdrv.exe
8192 16 /n /v
Assuming c:\windows is
your windows directory. And yes then modify the buffers entry
in config.sys to 10 i.e.
BUFFERS=10
New in OSR2 is support
for Hard Drive/CDROM Direct Memory Access. With DMA enabled,
no processor time is used to access the hard drive or CDROM.
The result is an improvement in overall system performance. However,
the default for DMA is disabled (for the default OSR2 Bus Mastering
IDE controller drivers)! Note that varying hardware configurations
will show varying improvements in system performance when DMA
is enabled. To enable HD DMA, go to Control Panel > System
> Device Manager > Disk Drives. Highlight your hard drive,
click properties. Click the "settings" tab. Check the
box next to "DMA." Restart the system when prompted,
and repeat for any additional hard or CDROM drives.
NOTE that the DMA checkbox
only appears 1) for IDE drives, and 2) only if the default OSR2
bus mastering IDE controller drivers are installed and configured
correctly. Some IDE drives do not support Bus Mastering. In effect,
OSR2 supports Bus Mastering, but only by checking the DMA box,
is Bus Mastering turned "on."
Note that the DMA check
box only appears when using the default Windows95 OSR2 Bus Master
drivers. If you are using non-bus mastering drivers, the DMA
box won't show up because Bus Mastering cannot be enabled. If
you are using other Bus Mastering drivers, the DMA box does not
show up because it is enabled by default, and you don't have
the option of disabling Bus Mastering.
It has previously been
written that FAT32 is not faster than FAT16 in the OSR 2 beta
release notes, early Windows 98 beta release notes, and Introduction
to Windows 98 from Microsoft Press. This is no longer true. In
fact, the largest application-launch performance gains are associated
with FAT32.
FAT32 uses the disk cache
(Vcache) more efficiently by allowing the memory manager to map
directly into memory portions of an application that is in the
disk cache. This process eliminates an additional memory copy
of the mapped portions of the application. This feature is only
available only on FAT32 volumes.
FAT32 allows the memory
manager to write pageable data very efficiently to the swap file
while a system is idle. This feature is only available on FAT32
volumes and volumes with cluster sizes greater than 4K.
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