Hard Drives
How large of a hard drive should
I use? This depends upon how many programs you
use. If you click My Computer and right click
your C: drive and select Properties,
you will get detailed information on your hard drive including
Total capacity, Used Space and free space. Used space is in blue
and free space is in fuschia. At the top of the window, you will
see which FAT (file allocation table) Windows is using. If you
need more space and you have more than 8GB of total space and you
are using the FAT32 file system, you can repartition your hard
drive so that each partition is 8GB or less. This frees up space
because your computer stores information in areas on the hard
drive called CLUSTERS. Each cluster can hold only one file. Using
FAT32, if you have a partition of more than 8GB each cluster size
will equal 8KB, partitions below 8GB will give you clusters of
4KB in size. If you use small files the smaller clusters will be
filled more than the larger clusters would. With the larger
clusters, it is possible to fill your hard drive before ever
reaching it's capacity because of partially filled clusters.
