If you're running linux and using a file system such as reiserfs or ext4 you won't be block aligned anyway. 4K blocks are an inefficient way to store small files on block aligned system like NTFS. You won't care so much if you're storing large files like movies, but if you're storing lots of MP3's, wordprocessing docs, source code modules, spreadsheets, etc. I wouldn't want 4K blocks. For example a 1K file will consume 4K of disk space. If you're an OS/2 user running HPFS, you're not worried about it either since you're using an extent based filesystem. The default on my Windows XP boxes is to use the default for the size of the harddrive. I always choose 512B. The drawback is RAM overhead needed for that.
reiserfs, ext4, hpfs, Novell Storage Systems, xfs and zfs will pack multiple files into a block. NTFS is still in the dark ages and is still block aligned. Its really FAT 64 with a better index table structure. HPFS is even cooler since it keeps its table at the seek center of a partition and acts more like a database because of the extended attributes.
There's a reason I buy Seagate drives exclusively. This is one of them.
Register
I don't know what the fuss is about
If you're running linux and using a file system such as reiserfs or ext4 you won't be block aligned anyway. 4K blocks are an inefficient way to store small files on block aligned system like NTFS. You won't care so much if you're storing large files like movies, but if you're storing lots of MP3's, wordprocessing docs, source code modules, spreadsheets, etc. I wouldn't want 4K blocks. For example a 1K file will consume 4K of disk space. If you're an OS/2 user running HPFS, you're not worried about it either since you're using an extent based filesystem. The default on my Windows XP boxes is to use the default for the size of the harddrive. I always choose 512B. The drawback is RAM overhead needed for that.
reiserfs, ext4, hpfs, Novell Storage Systems, xfs and zfs will pack multiple files into a block. NTFS is still in the dark ages and is still block aligned. Its really FAT 64 with a better index table structure. HPFS is even cooler since it keeps its table at the seek center of a partition and acts more like a database because of the extended attributes.
There's a reason I buy Seagate drives exclusively. This is one of them.