Windows 7: Cluster Size vs Slack Space

Hello All!

In the old days, Norton Utilities had a slack space analyzer that would show you what the optimal cluster size to slack space ratio should be based on your current disk usage.

Does anyone know of a current utility that will perform that same function?



TIA

The more clusters you have the slower the drive....is a few extra gigs worth it?

I can envision a case where it might be worth it--particularly on an SSD where you might be willing to sacrifice some speed to gain space if you were running up against capacity.

Rap:

Look here, particularly at the Karen's app. Never used it.

Free eraser that cleans slack space Download - eraser that cleans slack space Files

ignatzatsonic:

Exactly what I was looking for- Thanks!

Rap:

I just downloaded and ran the Karen app.

FYI: it asked about overwriting a couple of files during the install. The onscreen advice about over-writing was NOT well written or explicit, so I don't know if it overwrote my 2 Windows files or not. Therefore, I am going to do a system restore now that I am done with it.

Here's what it found:

All my drives have 4k clusters.

My C drive has 199 MB of slack out of a total of 60 GB space
My D drive has 101 MB of slack out of a total of 536 GB space
My E drive has 285 MB of slack out of a total of 1.36 TB space

D and E have less than 1/10 of 1% slack.

The C drive has about .3% slack on the 60 GB partition.

Total slack is only 585 MB.

Pleasantly surprised and I'm not going to make any changes.

I got the same questions about the over-writes and chose not to over-write the newer files.
These are older .ocx (pre-XP) files and we certainly don't want them on a Windows 7 system

Thanks for your help- that utility is just what I needed.
My results were as satisfying as yours were...

An flash-based SSD can only write and read in 4K chucks as it were anyways. Going lower or higher won't matter. The smallest unit the drive handles is 4K, it puts those units into block about 512K large.