shrinking reserved MTF area

[roytam1]

I think it would be nice if JkDefrag can shrink reserved MTF area in a smaller size and use it while defraging.

EDIT: Typo.

[jeroen]

I think it would be nice if JkDefrag can shrink reserved MTF area in a smaller size and use it while defraging.

Thanks for sharing your idea, I appreciate it! But I have no idea which calls in Microsoft libraries can do that. I think actually even Windows can't do it, I think the MFT reserved area can only grow, not shrink...

[justaguy]

Well, Paragon Total Defrag 2007 does it. Of course, they probably don't use Microsoft libraries...

[blackt1ger]

Okay, the MFT zone is in general calculated to be

MFT Reserved Clusters = ( TotalClusters >> 3) * Multipler.  

The "Multiplier" defaults to "1" and is a DWORD.  It can be made larger, see MSDN docs.

When the volume is mounted (during boot or other times), the MFT zone is calculated by the volume bitmap routines (ntfsinit.c).

Step 1:  fill up your harddisk.
Step 2:  delete the junk you just used to fill.
Step 3:  defragment.

No reboots!

Be aware that after reboot, new MFT Zone runs will be calculated.

After I release a GUI, I'm going to investigate the reducation of MFT Zones.

FYI:  My MFTZone is 67Gigs, which effectively prevents a 64Gig static file from being defragmented (a 64Gig virtual harddrive).