Acronis Disk Director 12 - User Guide - Manual (Page 40)

40 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2014
Acronis Disk Director does not perform defragmentation itself, rather it launches the Disk
Defragmenter tool (Defrag.exe) included in Windows operating system.
To defragment a volume
1. Right click the volume you need to defragment, and then click Defragment.
2. In the Defragmentation window, click OK to start defragmenting the volume.
Depending on the amount of fragmented files, the defragmentation may take a long time to
complete. The results will be displayed in a separate window.
5.21 Changing a cluster size
Changing a cluster size of a volume affects the amount of free/used disk space.
Smaller cluster sizes allow for more efficient storage of smaller files by reducing the amount of
wasted disk space. Furthermore, larger files may become more fragmented across the volume,
increasing the amount of time that is needed to access them.
Bigger cluster sizes improve performance by decreasing the time to access to larger files. However,
having a bigger cluster size wastes disk space if the typical size of the files stored on the volume is
smaller than the cluster size.
To change cluster size
1. Right-click the volume whose cluster size you need to change, and then click Change cluster size.
2. Select the required cluster size from the list. The default cluster size is marked in the list as
(default). The default cluster size depends on the volume size and the type of the file system. For
example, the default cluster size for up to 2-TB NTFS volumes is 4 KB.
Important: The program does not allow you to select a particular cluster size if, the free volume space will
decrease to the point where the data will not fit on the volume.
Some programs do not work correctly with volumes whose file systems have big cluster sizes, such as a
cluster size of 64 KB in the FAT16 and FAT32 file systems, and cluster sizes of 8 KB through 64 KB in the
NTFS file system. For example, these programs may incorrectly calculate the total and available space on
such volumes. Acronis Disk Director displays warning messages, when you select such cluster sizes.
3. Click OK to add the pending cluster size changing operation.
The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been
performed.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 22). Exiting the program without
committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them.
5.22 Changing a file system
This operation lets you change the volume file systems of the following type:

FAT16 to FAT32 and back

Ext2 to Ext3 and back
The table below describes main differences between the file systems.
Feature FAT16 FAT32 Ext2 Ext3