Conference decwet::windows-nt

    On my 600MB NTFS partition, the MFT is 4390912 bytes.  This system was
    recently installed and I don't use it for much more than the NT files.
    (FYI: My 1GB "user" partition which has not been formatted for 2 years
    has a 13MB MFT.)
    
    If you have a lot of files or have done alot of file creates at one
    time, the MFT will have grown - it never shrinks.
    A reformat and then restore is probably your only option.  
    
    Does the Executive software utility give you any more detailed
    information about the MFT -number of free records, size of free
    segment, ????  
    
    
    I have a copy of the Inside NTFS book but it does not give algorithms
    for calculating the initial size or talk about "reasonable" size of the
    MFT. 
    
    Of course the size of the disk determines the size of the MFT record
    and  the cluster size, so if the
    file attributes don't fit into the MFT record, a "cluster size" amount
    is allocated to contain that information.
    
    If you find anything else, let us know!

    Interestingly enough, the graphical display shows the "Reserved MFT
    Space" as approximately 225 Mb.  The textual display shows the MFT
    size as 20 Mb (20508 kb), with 20508 records, and 82% of the MFT in
    use.  In the past I've had quite a few more files on this disk than
    at present, but I find it hard to believe the MFT could have grown
    so large.  Then again, how "reserved MFT space" relates to the MFT
    size is up for debate (Diskkeeper doesn't document it).
    
    Norton's SpeedDisk for NT doesn't show the details of the MFT.
    
    I'll probably resort to a save/restore operation to see if that
    fixes the problem.

I believe that's simply a "problem" with the graphical display of 
Diskeeper. The allocation unit (cluster) is 512 bytes, so a 2GB disk 
is ~4M clusters. Even is DK used each pixel of a 1280x1024 display to 
show your disk occupation each pixel would still have to account for 
~4 clusters. If 4 contiguous clusters are not all allocated for the 
same type of thing (MFT, directory, file, etc.) how is it displayed ?

And of course DK uses more than one pixel for each "unit", otherwise 
you coudn't see much could you ?

For example if I had to believe the graphical display of DK on my 4GB 
disk, I'd be worried because I'd think it's almost full (free space 
occupies barely 3% of the graphical display) whereas it has 1.5GB 
free.

So take the graphical display for what it is, a rough visual feedback 
of how fragmented your disk is. Your MFT is probably really 20MB big, 
not 225MB. Does it make you feel better ? ;-)

	Vincent

    After several runs at defragging the disk (using Norton's packing
    feature), the largest free space is only about 5 MB.  Both Norton
    and Diskkeeper show a big chunk (about 250 MB) at the front of the
    disk - Norton shows it as "free", while Diskkeeper shows it as
    reserved MFT space (Norton doesn't indicate the MFT).
    
    Ignoring the graphical display for the moment, and assuming that
    multiple runs of the defragmentation tools have packed the files
    as tightly as possible, it would seem reasonable that the big
    chunk would result in the largest free space being substantially
    greater than 5 MB.
    
    Since Diskkeeper lists the entire region as "reserved MFT space",
    I'm inclined to believe that space is not usable for data storage;
    the largest free space number seems to agree with that.
    
    I have an identical drive on order.  I'll try cloning the drive
    with the big MFT and see if the clone shows different results for
    reserved MFT space after all the files are copied.
    

    re: .4 by STAR::DZIEDZIC
    
    >> I have an identical drive on order.  I'll try cloning the drive with
    >> the big MFT and see if the clone shows different results for reserved
    >> MFT space after all the files are copied.
    
    Try not to make your cloned disk too faithful a reproduction of your
    original disk or you won't be any better off.
    
    ;-)