MFT

General Computing Microsoft Windows
1

Ok guess what I thought I knew must be wrong.

I noticed the other day that the MFT is up to 1gb.
Now I do keep the system very clean and trim for the most part.
I even deleted a crap load of MS products such as the Office Suite, Works, etc etc… yet it is still growing after that! I thought with deleted folders and files that the MFT reduced along with such actions.
I keep the MFT free space wiped and defragmented. I have shut down the VSC, no restore points are kept. (find worthless)
So someone please explain how such is growing when files and folders are deleted and nothing new being added.

2

Google is your friend :slight_smile:

The MFT is the heart of an NTFS partition. There is at least one entry in the MFT for every file on an NTFS volume. All the information about a file, including its’ size, time and date stamps, permissions, data content, etc. are stored in the MFT (or in space described by the MFT).

To prevent fragmentation of the MFT, NTFS reserves space for the MFT in an effort to keep it as contiguous as it grows. This is important because defraggers can not move MFT records and fragmentation of the MFT can severely impact performance.

When you add files to an NTFS volume, entries are added to the MFT. When files are deleted from an NTFS volume, their MFT entries are marked as free and may be reused, but the MFT does not shrink. Thus, space used by these entries is not reclaimed from the disk.

NTFS reserves a percentage of the volume for exclusive use of the MFT. Space for files and directories will not be allocated from this MFT zone until all other space is allocated first. Depending on the average file size and other variables, either the reserved MFT zone or the unreserved space on the disk may be filled first. Volumes with a few large files will exhaust the unreserved space first, while volumes with a large number of small files will exhaust the MFT zone space first. When either the MFT zone or the unreserved space fills, fragmentation of the MFT starts. If the unreserved space becomes full, space for user files and directories will be allocated from the MFT zone. If the MFT zone becomes full, space for new MFT entries will be allocated from the remainder of the disk.

You can impact the amount of space NTFS reserves for the MFT by editing:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

Add Value name NtfsMftZoneReservation as a type REG_DWORD and set the data value. The valid range is 1 - 4.

Value: 1 12.5% of free space, default
Value: 2 25% of free space
Value: 3 37.5% of free space
Value: 4 50% of free space

NOTE: This is a run-time parameter and does not affect the format of a volume. It affects the way NTFS allocates space on all volumes. To be completely effective, this entry should in effect at the time you format a volume.

3

Ah, but doesn’t really answer the question dear “don’t mix well”
Which is why is it growing when so much has been removed and nothing added.
and the 1gb is not the allocated space but the actual used space
BTW I did Google that info too. ~smiles~

4

it grows because it will always use new space rather than reuse old space, so deleting files will make no difference. This is an attempt to stop the MFT from fragmenting. it will grow up to the % size set by the registry parameter and only then will it start re-using entries. Classic Microsoft, why doesn’t the silly thing just grab all the space it wants when it first initialises? If nothing has been added, I’ll bet (classic Microsoft again) that when any file is changed Winblows removes its old MFT entry and grabs a shiny new one. Don’t forget there’s many things going on “under the hood”.

So --erm-- ignore, 'cos there ain’t much you can do about it. Some of the disk utilities can change the size of the MFT, but I’m guessing that would be doomed to failure as well because Winblows would just start increasing its size once more.

Can’t be more help really, sorry if thats not the answer you want.

5

:wall:Well I don’t like it and it is a stupid system and I just wont have it!:razz:
~smiles~
Now what are you going to do about it…
Under the hood huh, yep lots going on there!

6

100% agree its a crap operating system, but hey ho you’re probably stuck with it.

7

Oh… you just wait till I get my hands on you! I’ll show you Ho.:smiley:

Well then I’ll just deal with it… but I’m not liking it, nope not at all.

8

Promises promises… :smiley:

9

[QUOTE=Vortex;454364]Oh… you just wait till I get my hands on you! I’ll show you Ho.:smiley:

Well then I’ll just deal with it… but I’m not liking it, nope not at all.[/QUOTE]

Maybe you need to stop the Heidi Ho with Uncle $Bill$ and get a MAC! :smiley: :chuckle: :smiley:

10

I was wondering how long it was going to take for you to throw an Apple Ad in this thread:D

11

I tried to find my MFT size in Win7 but gave up after a while… can’t find it.

Elsewhere, as Apple is valued more than MS, maybe we’ll see more of $teve Job$?

12

[QUOTE=mackerel;454398]I tried to find my MFT size in Win7 but gave up after a while… can’t find it.

Elsewhere, as Apple is valued more than MS, maybe we’ll see more of $teve Job$?[/QUOTE]

You will note that Apples profit was half of what M$ was and Apple is a much more diversified company than Uncle $Bill’s$ place. Apple continues to take Market Share from most all its competitors, Microsoft is just one.

13

[QUOTE=mackerel;454398]I tried to find my MFT size in Win7 but gave up after a while… can’t find it.

Elsewhere, as Apple is valued more than MS, maybe we’ll see more of $teve Job$?[/QUOTE]
I have no idea how to find it through Windows system. I use Diskeeper 2010
and it is part of the logs. That and it makes it easy to do a boot defrag on the MFT. Really a great program.

14

http://support.microsoft.com/default.Aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320397 should help on MFT reduce