MTF too big

Old Man · 1 Mar 2011 at 04:28

I moved my Steam games from OS partition to another larger partition on the same hd and now my MTF section is huge on my OS partition, so is there anything to do about it?

Using XP Pro.

ty

Fourstar · 1 Mar 2011 at 09:45

Do you mean Master File Table (MFT)? And how huge? Did it definitely grow while moving the Steam folder?

IIRC XP reserves 12.5% of partition size for the MFT zone by default so if it's not more than 12.5 Gig on a 100 Gig partition that is normal.

/edit - added quote:

Since keeping the MFT contiguous on the disk improves performance, when an NTFS volume is first set up, the operating system reserves about 12.5% of the disk space immediately following the MFT; this is sometimes called the "MFT Zone". This is a substantial chunk of real estate to reserve, but bear in mind that it is still usable. Regular files and directories will not use this space until and unless the rest of the disk volume space is consumed, but if that occurs, the "MFT Zone" will be used.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/archMFT-c.html

Old Man · 1 Mar 2011 at 11:15

Hmm ok. Just having problems with my O&O Defrag showing constant 10% frag problem now since Steam was moved.

TY

Fourstar · 1 Mar 2011 at 14:50

Does O&O say what is fragmented?

If the MFT zone is fragmented there is not much you can do. If it is the data within that is fragmented I thought programs like O&O would do that.

Old Man · 1 Mar 2011 at 22:41

Fourstar said:
Does O&O say what is fragmented?

If the MFT zone is fragmented there is not much you can do. If it is the data within that is fragmented I thought programs like O&O would do that.

Have checked more on the internet and it seems O&O reports the MFT all the time as fragged and there's nothing you can do with it through this program; while other programs will simply not show the MFT.

Guess I'm stuck with it as is.

TY