Allocation Unit Size when formatting to FAT32

When formatting to a USB Drive to FAT32, what is the best practice for selecting the "Allocation Unit Size"? How does selection of different Allocation Unit Sizes affect the following:

Transfer speeds when exporting tracks to the USB Drive
Read speeds from the USB Drive when connected to the CDJ

Kyle Douglas March 26, 2018 23:26 Answered

Official comment

Allocation unit size basically tells the drive the smallest block of memory to assign for data being written. If you select 4k blocks and the data is 2k, it will still use 4k. If the data is 6k, it uses two blocks (8k). Larger blocks are beneficial because they can read/write faster than having to address numerous small blocks, but in the case of rekordbox, which does have lots of small files, you may be best using the 4k block size.

That said, I almost always allow the system to use the default when formatting.

Pulse March 27, 2018 18:14

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Additional comment...

You're going to find a higher quality drive performs better than any setting you can change for the block size on a cheap drive. I recommend Corsair Voyager GTX and SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.1 drives.

Pulse March 27, 2018 18:15 0 votes

Yes, I currently use the SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.1 drives, 256 GB. They are amazingly fast, both in terms of writing to the USB and reading from the USB when they are connected to the CDJ's.

Kyle Douglas March 29, 2018 20:04 0 votes

Awesome! Yeah, whatever the system default is should work just fine. Typically there is little advantage in changing it unless you have a specific reason to do so in understanding how the drive allocates data to blocks and how it's written / read.

Pulse March 29, 2018 22:57 0 votes