What's so special about 4kb for a buffer length?
That is because 4K is the default cluster size for for disks upto 16TB. So when picking a buffer size it makes sense to allocate the buffer in multiples of the cluster size.
A cluster is the smallest unit of allocation for a file, so if a file contains only 1 byte it will consume 4K of physical disk space. And a file of 5K will result in a 8K allocation.
Update: Added a code sample for getting the cluster size of a drive
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
class Program
{
[DllImport("kernel32", SetLastError=true)]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
static extern bool GetDiskFreeSpace(
string rootPathName,
out int sectorsPerCluster,
out int bytesPerSector,
out int numberOfFreeClusters,
out int totalNumberOfClusters);
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int sectorsPerCluster;
int bytesPerSector;
int numberOfFreeClusters;
int totalNumberOfClusters;
if (GetDiskFreeSpace("C:\\",
out sectorsPerCluster,
out bytesPerSector,
out numberOfFreeClusters,
out totalNumberOfClusters))
{
Console.WriteLine("Cluster size = {0} bytes",
sectorsPerCluster * bytesPerSector);
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("GetDiskFreeSpace Failed: {0:x}",
Marshal.GetLastWin32Error());
}
Console.ReadKey();
}
}