I just converted my hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS using Win XPs convert program. My hard drive is a lot slower. Why?
When converting FAT32 to NTFS, the Win XP conversion sets up the 512 byte clusters, not the more desirable 4K clusters. These systems have shown a massive slow down in disk I/O performance. These systems need to have the cluster size increased to 4K. Unfortunately, to do this you need a third party software application since there is no conversion available from Microsoft. One application that has been recommended, but that I haven’t tested, is Paragon Partition Manager. It is available at a cost of $39.95. Or you can reformat your hard drive and set the cluster size correctly resulting in a faster computer.
