Associate
- Joined
- 6 Jun 2008
- Posts
- 117
Hello
some questions about mft
- how does ntfs format decide the initial location?
- is it changed by xp installation?
- how can you move it?
- is the default location related to memory size?
the reason for my questions:
- I upgraded my memory
- needed to increase pagefile size
- this leads to fragmentation
- in order to rebuild my boot volume I ghosted to a file
- reformatted
- resized the mft using diskeeper
- restored the larger pagefile.sys
- defragmented the pagefile
- restored the boot files and windows folder
- defragged
- restored everything else
- defragged
I now have an almost perfect volume layout:
|--pagefile--|--mft--|--windows--|--other stuff--|
with zero fragmentation of pagefile or mft
unfortunately the actual final result was this:
|--pagefile--|--WINDOWS--|--mft--|--WINDOWS--|--other stuff--|
due to the location of the MFT
in reality this makes no difference, it may even be a good thing
but it annoys me that I do not know HOW to relocate the MFT to exactly
where I want it (eg. at the end of the pagefile)
also this machine only has 2GB - on my other 4GB machine - what happens if the mft
is located closer to block 0 than 4GB? How will I ensure a contiguous pagefile?
I have seen screenshots of volumes with the mft at the start also ... how did they achieve this?
The good news is my machine now boots to desktop with no disk activity in around 30 seconds and performs very nicely (it is an old pentium m laptop)
On a related topic - I am considering using a dedicated volume for each installed OS pagefile like so:
this is a hard drive:
|--pagefile1--|--pagefile2--|--win1--|--win2--|
the idea being that both pagefiles are close to block0 and I don't have to worry about their position within the volume - they are the only file afterall
I think the trick is to hide the pagefile partitions during installation of windows
and then move the pagefile to them after unhiding them
Has anybody used this technique?
some questions about mft
- how does ntfs format decide the initial location?
- is it changed by xp installation?
- how can you move it?
- is the default location related to memory size?
the reason for my questions:
- I upgraded my memory
- needed to increase pagefile size
- this leads to fragmentation
- in order to rebuild my boot volume I ghosted to a file
- reformatted
- resized the mft using diskeeper
- restored the larger pagefile.sys
- defragmented the pagefile
- restored the boot files and windows folder
- defragged
- restored everything else
- defragged
I now have an almost perfect volume layout:
|--pagefile--|--mft--|--windows--|--other stuff--|
with zero fragmentation of pagefile or mft
unfortunately the actual final result was this:
|--pagefile--|--WINDOWS--|--mft--|--WINDOWS--|--other stuff--|
due to the location of the MFT
in reality this makes no difference, it may even be a good thing
but it annoys me that I do not know HOW to relocate the MFT to exactly
where I want it (eg. at the end of the pagefile)
also this machine only has 2GB - on my other 4GB machine - what happens if the mft
is located closer to block 0 than 4GB? How will I ensure a contiguous pagefile?
I have seen screenshots of volumes with the mft at the start also ... how did they achieve this?
The good news is my machine now boots to desktop with no disk activity in around 30 seconds and performs very nicely (it is an old pentium m laptop)
On a related topic - I am considering using a dedicated volume for each installed OS pagefile like so:
this is a hard drive:
|--pagefile1--|--pagefile2--|--win1--|--win2--|
the idea being that both pagefiles are close to block0 and I don't have to worry about their position within the volume - they are the only file afterall
I think the trick is to hide the pagefile partitions during installation of windows
and then move the pagefile to them after unhiding them
Has anybody used this technique?
Last edited: