Solved Mft

[seekermeister]

Okay, this is a problem on my XP x64 system, rather than W7, but I would think that it would work about the same. I just finished a series of cut/paste operations to reorganize hard drive space. The target drive was totally empty and freshly formatted before I began, but now when viewing it frag status, it shows ~ the first 137 GBs reserved for the MFT, as can be seen in the screenshot below. I have never seen that much space used for that purpose on any Windows OS before. Anyone have any idea of how to trim that down?

EDIT: You'll have to take my word about it, because the forum won't accept the size of my upload. Unfortunately XP doesn't have Snippet, and I don't want to go looking for something like it.

 

[Dwarf]

No image, but I don't think that matters too much. If my memory serves me correctly, the original versions of XP had an issue with disk sizes in that they could not recognise (and use) all of the available disk if it exceeded 137GB - they could only use 137GB of it, even if it was fully recognised in the BIOS. This was rectified with SP1. I know that we are currently upto SP3 for the 32-bit version of XP, but whether any Service Packs have ever been released for the 64-bit version I can't say.

 

[seekermeister]

Yes, XP x64 is up to SP2, and I don't have any problems with my other drives that are over 137GBs.

 

[Dwarf]

Thanks. I've used XP, but not the 64-bit version. It could be an issue with the disk itself - have you tried a chkdsk on it?

As regards the image, there is a workaround that can be used in all Windows OSes and which, in some cases, is better than the Snipping Tool which has its limitations, specifically it can't capture menus. I am, of course, talking about PrtScn. This captures an image of the full screen which you can manipulate in Paint to select the pertinent section which can be attached.

 

[seekermeister]

Thanks for the tip. I originally used Paint to save the screenshot in that fashion, except that I didn't know about it's clipping function. I hope this is small enough to work:

 

[seekermeister]

I've been thinking about this, and I have a feeling that XP manages the MFT differently than W7, and don't think that chkdsk is going to correct this. I'm going to use True Image to create a file backup, then after reformatting the drive, recover the files from the image. I say file backup, because I don't know if a backup of the partition would include all of those MFT blocks or not?

 

[logicearth]

How NTFS reserves space for its Master File Table (MFT)

Applicable to Windows XP only. Windows Vista changed the way the MFT is handled.
In my own opinion. I would not worry about it and let the system manage itself.

 

[seekermeister]

It appears that the problem has disappeared, because I moved that drive to my second rig booted to W7, and ran O&O on the drive, and what was MFT is now free space. I ran the defrag, to fill the empty space, and it looks good. I would really be surprised if the MFT space returned when I moved the drive back to where it was.