Win XP's MFT file

[DragonFire]

Is there anyway to move the MFT file to the end of hard drive? The more I look at O&O defrag, the more I get annoyed that I can't have all my files at the beginning of the drive because the MFT sits near the beginning.

There have been a few times in the past where I have seen the MFT file get moved but I have no clue what I did.

Can it be done?

 

[bsobel]

You do not want to do this. The MFT itself contains the first extent (run) of every file (e.g. if your file is 100k, the first 1 or 2k are stored in the mft the rest in seperate extents).

 

[DragonFire]

Originally posted by: bsobel
You do not want to do this. The MFT itself contains the first extent (run) of every file (e.g. if your file is 100k, the first 1 or 2k are stored in the mft the rest in seperate extents).

That I did not know, I thought the MFT was just a index for the files. So why is it I have seen it move itself in the past?

Would it be possible to make a custom XP cd and change some setting or something that will put it closer to the end or at the very begining of the drive?

 

[Nothinman]

Putting your files need the beginning of the drive is pointless, virtually no files are read in a large enough contiguous stream for the speed to make a difference. Seek time is what determines every day use performance and having all of your data grouped together, anywhere on the drive, is best because it minimizes seek times between files.

 

[DragonFire]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Seek time is what determines every day use performance and having all of your data grouped together, anywhere on the drive, is best because it minimizes seek times between files.

which is why I am asking such a question.....in O&O defrag my drive looks like a layer cake. I have some files starting at the begining and then here comes this big fat MFT in the middle with the rest of my files after it.

Because no one has made a defrag program smart enough to put say all the windows files in one place, my drive ends up seeking/reading all over the place because the MFT file is sitting right in the middle.

 

[nweaver]

It still doesn't matter, it has to go to the MFT table to read info, so having it in the continous block of data makes sense.

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: DragonFire

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Seek time is what determines every day use performance and having all of your data grouped together, anywhere on the drive, is best because it minimizes seek times between files.

which is why I am asking such a question.....in O&O defrag my drive looks like a layer cake. I have some files starting at the begining and then here comes this big fat MFT in the middle with the rest of my files after it.

Because no one has made a defrag program smart enough to put say all the windows files in one place, my drive ends up seeking/reading all over the place because the MFT file is sitting right in the middle.

There might be a reason that no one has made a program to do this. And there might be a reason why Microsofts engineers, who spend much of their time on this type of thing, have decided to put the MFT where it is. And since discs have multiple platters/heads, its not like the MFT is technically in the middle of the drive, its on one or two platters.. the MFT could be right above/below related data it needs to access.. meaning the head may or may not have to move (much) to read everything it needs.

 

[Nothinman]

Because no one has made a defrag program smart enough to put say all the windows files in one place, my drive ends up seeking/reading all over the place because the MFT file is sitting right in the middle.

There's nothing smart about moving things around, you need to read the MFT for every file lookup so you end up seeking into the MFT just as much, if not more, than regular files.

And there might be a reason why Microsofts engineers, who spend much of their time on this type of thing, have decided to put the MFT where it is

That I would say is debatable, it's obvious that they've left out reasonably smart allocation logic for no good reason. Unix filesystems don't have nearly as many problems with fragmentation as NTFS does and most of them don't even have defrag tools because there's no need, but if MS made the NTFS driver smarter all of the defrag vendors would cry foul.