Partition Magic 8 Help

I got partition magic 8 and was checking out the resizing clusters part so I could switch to ntfs format.

While doing this it shows me the different sizes I can resize to. I know that I have to change to 4k before converting to ntfs but I have a question about the screen that partition magic shows me at this point.

It shows me how much is wasted and next to 4k it says 70.5 mb. Is this the total wasted is I convert to 4k? 32k has 709.2 mb, is that how much is wasted now or how much of my total hard drive will be wasted if I keep those cluster sizes.

If its how much is wasted now then I think I will actually convert to ntfs as wasting 100mb for every gig I have used so far seems to be way too much.

 

You dont need to change cluster size before changing to NTFS. It does that during conversion anyway.

And yes, it shows how much disk space is wasted at each cluster size setting. At 32k you waste 710MB, at 4k you waste 70mb.

 

Is that 710 overall so far or does that mean that I will have wasted that much across only the space I've used so far. If its the space wasted so far then does that mean it will increase the more I use my hard drive space? 700mb wasted already just seems too huge.

 

Another thing that I just noticed when I was about to resize the clusters and change to ntfs is that when selecting 4k as the new cluster size I get told by partition magic that the size of the partition afterwars will go from 94gb to 24gb.

What is that all about? If the fat32 system is wasting so much space I wanna change it to ntfs but why does it say the size decreases by 70gb?

 

700MB isn't huge, I'd have expected much more. And I think it's just an estimate for the entire partition, based on how big files are on average. (So no, it doesn't depend on how much space is currently used, only how big the partition is... I believe.

And the reason is that fat32 can't handle big partitions with small cluster sizes. As I said, it changes cluster size automatically during conversion to NTFS. If you try to do it before, you have to do it under the restraints given by FAT32 (which means that to have big partitions, you need big cluster size. And if you try to reduce the cluster size, the max partition size goes down)

 

right, the only reason I was trying to reduce the cluster size before changing to ntfs is that elsewhere on here I was advised that it should be done first even if I was going to use partition magic to make the change.

700 mb isn't too bad but its a new laptop so I haven't really had a chance to load up the hard drive with useless junk yet wasted space will probably increase as i use more hdd space though.

But just to be absolutely clear on this, as soon as I select convert from partition magic its gonna change the cluster size as its changing to ntfs?

Sorry to be a pain but its probably better to be sure about this before I do anything