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FAT32 cluster size

Hi,
we have a problem depicted in next couple sentences.
We have Virtual CD v10.0 installed on win 2003 SP2.
After the blank medium creation --> right click--> the only option regarding formatting is FAT32 as a file system and Default allocation size for Allocation unit size.
Nevertheless this settings represent no problem to us but
the fact that after formatting process there is cluster size/allocation unit size set to 16k although according to default FAT32 settings(http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/140365), every volume 256MB-8GB in size on win2003 should have dedicated 4k for cluster size/allocation unit size.
So please could you provide any suggestion/hint how to decrease this cluster size from 16k to 4k or even more(1k).


thanks in advance

Formatting options

This is not a problem by Virtual CD, but a limitation of Windows 2003 (and XP). If you insert a physical DVD-RAM you will get the same options. Windows 7 for instance provides the full set from 2048 Bytes to 64 Kilobytes for FAT32.
BTW: FAT32 is not to best format, but UDF is natively not available on Windows 2003/XP (but may be provided by 3rd party packet writing software, e.g. InCD).

Virtual CD Support Reply - Forward

Hi,

thanks for provided answer.
Yes, although we are aware that this is not a problem by Virtual CD, but a limitation of Windows 2003 (and XP) we taught that there was some hidden option inside Virtual CD that could deal with it.
Unfortunately we are limited by using exactly win2003 and FAT32 format.
Still we are unpleasantly surprised that windows uses 16k for Allocation unit size as default option instead 4k for 256MB-8GB volume size.
Anyway we are going to try cmd Format utility.

Thanks for your expeditious comment.

FAT32 cluster size for Windows 2003

Well, Virtual CD is indeed a powerful tool, but we are not able to provide cluster sizes which are not supoorted be the OS. Additionally the formatting procedure is something which is not under control of Virtual CD, but is ewoked by the OS.

The only solution is to switch to a more modern OS which provides more cluster sizes for FAT32, such as WIndows 2008 R2 and higher...

BTW: You answered to our automatic reply email which I only found by chance this morning. Please always answer within the same forum thread. Thank you.
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