The following tables illustrate below the various cluster size limitations for each particular file systems. Why should you care about the cluster size of your partition? Because you can save a great deal of space by choosing the right file system. For example, if your file is 1K in size and your cluster size is 32K, then you've just wasted 31K of "slack" space for that file.
FAT/FAT16 (DOS/Windows 95/Windows
NT)
| Partition Size | Cluster Size |
| 0 - 127MB | 2K |
| 128 - 255MB | 4K |
| 256 - 511MB | 8K |
| 512 - 1023MB | 16K |
| 1024 - 2047MB | 32K |
Note: FAT16 is limited to 2GB per partition.
FAT32 (Windows 95 version 950B)
| Partition Size | Cluster Size |
| 512MB - 8GB | 4K |
| 8GB - 16GB | 8K |
| 16GB - 32GB | 16K |
| 32GB or more | 32K |
Note: A partition formatted as FAT32 can only been seen in Windows 95 version 950B. Eariler versions of Windows 95, DOS 6.22, or even Windows NT 4.0 cannot recognize FAT32 partitions!
NTFS (Windows NT)
| Partition Size | Sectors/Cluster | Cluster Size |
| 512MB or less | 1 | 512 bytes |
| 513MB - 1024MB (1GB) | 2 | 1K |
| 1025MB - 2048MB (2GB) | 4 | 2K |
| 2049MB - 4096MB (4GB) | 8 | 4K |
| 4097MB - 8192MB (8GB) | 16 | 8K |
| 8193MB - 16,384MB (16GB) | 32 | 16K |
| 16,385MB - 32,768MB (32GB) | 64 | 32K |
| 32GB or more | 128 | 64K |
Note: You cannot use NTFS file compression if your cluster size is larger than 4K.