Mft fragmentation

[SusanJ03]

My percent Mft in use has been 96-98...do I need to
worry? I presently have 3 Mft fragments...I added a line
in registry NtfsMftZoneReservation and set value at 3
(not sure if I did it right) but the percent Mft in use
did not change...any help out there??? (I went into never-
ending search of KB in Microsoft...) I have plenty of
memory and disk space...but do use PS elements for lots
of photo work...6megapixel photo size...THANKS.

 

[Jaelani C. U.]

MFT size is dynamic, so when it's almost full, it expands automatically.
No need to worry.
MFT fragmentation is also normal. It's common for most PCs with NTFS
partition.
The only downside for fragmentation is degradation of disk access speed
but not much.
You can defragment MFT using a small freeware tool call PageDefrag.
This tool can also defragments the registry files and the page file(s).
You can download it from this link:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml

Hope that helps

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

The $MFT will grow as it fills up. You don't have to do anything at all or
be worried. What you have done by setting NtfsMftZoneReservation to 3 is to
tell NTFS to create a MFT Reserved Zone of 37.5% The default value of 12.5%
(by deleting NtfsMftZoneReservation or setting the value to 1) is normally
sufficient.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a
commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

Want to email me? Delete ntloader.