[syslinux] Cluster Size discrepancy between FAT32 and NTFS

[Gene Cumm]

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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