12.5% MFT Zone is actually less than 3%

[Zarbol Tsar]

I have XP Pro installed on a 10 GB partition.

I used the defragmenter PerfectDisk to see the space occupied by my
MFT Zone. It shows the MFT Zone occupies something like 2 or 3%.
You can see my results at:

http://freespace.virgin.net/orange.numbers/mft_pdisk.gif

However I understand that the MFT Zone should be at least 12.5% of
the partition. Microsoft's page at http://tinyurl.com/7x43z says:

"Setting 1, is the default, reserves approximately 12.5
percent of the disk.
Setting 2 reserves approximately 25 percent.
Setting 3 reserves approximately 37.5 percent.
Setting 4 reserves approximately 50 percent."

Why is my MFT so small? Am I misreading this information?

My registry setting at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
for the reserved space of the MFT Zone is currently showing number
"1". Should I increase it to "2"?

 

[Zarbol Tsar]

If you are having a problem please give specific details.

I am running out of MFT space. Look at my link for the diagram.

Maybe too little space for the MFT (I have 50 MB left) will
continuously and adversely affect performance.

 

[DILIP]

How much free space % do you have on the partition? If it is less than 15%,
then Windows automatically reduces the MFT allocation to make that space
available for files. If this is the case, what you are experiencing is
normal. Performance will reduce as the MFT gets fragmented, but given the
small disk size, you can't do much about it.