I recently bought an LS220D0202 (1.66). I knew beforehand that it has a cluster size of 128MB, which
is huge, but that didn't worry me as I'd be using it primarily for backups, producing files which would be typically much larger than that, so the relative overhead would be low.
However, while many files are being allocated up to the next 128MB some are being allocated up
much more. Here's a few examples at random:
Size (MB) | Allocated (MB) |
1715.6 | 2816.0 |
3999.9 | 6144.0 |
4207.0 | 8192.0 |
17838.8 | 24576.0 |
59682.8 | 65536.0 |
And many others. However it isn't consistent: there are other files of very similar sizes that are only allocated up to the next 128MB.
It's happening with both Macrium and Paragon backups, so it's not software dependent, and the overall figures are consistent with what NAS Navigator and the http interface are reporting. Doing a direct copy (LS220->LS220) of such over-allocated files, using either Windows Explorer or DOS Copy, reduces their allocated sizes to just the next 128MB.
So, how come some files have such huge over-allocations, and what can be done about it?