Syslinux - Jan 2014 - Cluster Size discrepancy between FAT32 and NTFS

Hi,

I am not an engineer or linux expert but I have been using syslinux to boot
live disk filesets (extracted from iso's) residing on fat32 and NTFS
volumes.

In FAT32 there has been no problem going with larger cluster sizes up to the
nominal maximum of 64K

however, with NTFS it has not been possible to exceed the cluster size of 4096.
With NTFS formatted using clusters of 8192 or larger,
upon boot apparently the syslinux bootsector is
read since the syslinux version is displayed, but progress stops with no error
message

this has been tested using real machines, not virtual

ability to handle larger cluster sizes would seem to be as useful for NTFS as in
FAT32,
if not more so.

I stand by prepared for immediate testing of win32 syslinux versions as early as
4.06 which contain
modifications to include this property

thanks to all

On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 9:44 AM, mike setzer <qualityana at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am not an engineer or linux expert but I have been using syslinux to boot
> live disk filesets (extracted from iso's) residing on fat32 and NTFS
volumes.
>
> In FAT32 there has been no problem going with larger cluster sizes up to
the nominal maximum of 64K
>
> however, with NTFS it has not been possible to exceed the cluster size of
4096.
> With NTFS formatted using clusters of 8192 or larger,
> upon boot apparently the syslinux bootsector is
> read since the syslinux version is displayed, but progress stops with no
error message
Have you only tested 4096 and 8192?  Testing 16k+ probably won't be
useful if 8k fails but it may be good to know about 512/1024/2048
(eventually).

Are these NTFS volumes with non-standard cluster sizes bootable by Windows?

How was the file system created?  Is there any way you could export
the first sector of the partition to a file and either post it
directly or a hex representation of it?  The first sector should
specify things like sectors per cluster but it's possible something is
being misinterpreted.
> this has been tested using real machines, not virtual
>
> ability to handle larger cluster sizes would seem to be as useful for NTFS
as in FAT32,
> if not more so.
>
> I stand by prepared for immediate testing of win32 syslinux versions as
early as 4.06 which contain
> modifications to include this property
-- 
-Gene

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