Question Sandisk Extreme external SSD 2tb formatting question

[hr1975]

Yesterday I bought a Sandisk Extreme 2tb external SSD for use with my Win10 HP Spectre x360 ultrabook (has internal 256gb SSD C: drive). Here it is on the B&H website:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...sk_sdssde60_2t00_g25_extreme_600_2tb_ssd.html

It has exFAT file system and when I ran chkdsk on it says that the allocation size is 1,048,576 bytes (1mb). Is chkdsk reporting this accurately? That sure seems very large. I will only have data on it and the file sizes range from 1kb to 80mb. Lots in the 100kb to 16mb range. I care more about making efficient use of the space and not wasting it than I do about trying to get the last bit of performance. I have a Western Digital My Passport 4tb portable external HD (spinning platters) that has NTFS and 4kb allocation units. By the way, I already read this and it indicates that for external drives exFAT is probably the way to go:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-file-system-ntfs,3166-11.html

I am thinking that I should reformat it to exFAT with an allocation unit size of 4kb or 8kb. What do you think? Should I use the Windows command line format utility to do this? For example, a command like this:

format g: /FS:exFAT /V:Sandisk Extreme SSD /A:4096

 

[USAFRet]

"1MB" allocation size is way too large.

Either reformat it exFAT at 4kb, or NTFS.

 

[hr1975]

Thanks for the quick reply. Does chkdsk report accurately for this SSD? Hard to believe that Sandisk chose 1mb. I spent almost an hour in chat with Sandisk support today asking about how it was formatted out of the box and related questions, but they were useless. Barely understood the questions, gave contradicting answers, etc. I finally gave up on them.

To reformat should I use the Windows format utility? I just don't want to make wrong choices about what utility to use, what file system, and what allocation unit size so I am hoping to get some guidance. Thanks!

 

[hr1975]

Can I use the quick format option?

 

[USAFRet]

Personally, I would do it NTFS, unless there is some specific need for exFAT.

 

[hr1975]

NTFS is okay and I don't mind using it. I read the article here on this site that I linked to above and it suggested NTFS for internal drives and exFAT for external drives. I am still hoping for help with my other questions also.