NTFS and MFT: Change size?

[db]

Will be doing only a/v on an NTFS disk (array), and am wondering if the standard 12.5% space allocated to the MFT is way too big (wasted space) and would it be better to size it down?

Opinions please; thanks 🙂

 

[db]

Oops, meant this to go into General Hardware forum....

 

[Smilin]

I'm curious where you found the MFT takes 12.5% of the disk? It starts on the second sector of a partition and only runs for a few sectors.

You can try format with the /A switch and specify some really huge cluster size. Might help some, but you might end up with a TON of wasted space depending on your file size.

 

[Nothinman]

I'm curious where you found the MFT takes 12.5% of the disk? It starts on the second sector of a partition and only runs for a few sectors.

The MFT is much larger than a few sectors, I'm not sure if 12.5% is right because that seems a little high for bigger filesystems though.

And for the original poster:

The default MFT zone is calculated and reserved by the system when it mounts the volume, and is based on volume size. You can increase the MFT zone by means of the registry entry documented below, but you cannot make the default MFT zone smaller than what is calculated. Increasing the MFT zone does not decrease the disk space that users can use for data files.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Smilin
I'm curious where you found the MFT takes 12.5% of the disk? It starts on the second sector of a partition and only runs for a few sectors.

That is sorta correct/sorta incorrect, the default reservation in NT is 12.5%. In 2k and above See here for more info on the MFT and the reserved space. However, the space is only reserved not gaurenteed to be unusable. Once the drive is 'full', the reservation is cut in half and files are allowed to be stored in the reserved area until it fills up (and then it's halved again) until the drive is truely full.

Bill

 

[db]

Thanks for the info--that's what I needed 🙂

 

[Smilin]

Thanks guys. 😀