what program do you use to defrag the MFT?

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by mantra, Mar 4, 2014.

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  1. mantra

    mantra Registered Member

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    Hi

    what program do you use to defrag the mtf of your hard disks?

    i noticed that Contig _http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428.aspx

    can defrag online (not during a reboot) all the mft data
    do you use it?
    thanks
     
  2. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    Raxco Perfect Disk 13.0 does a pretty good job of doing this.

    Pete
     
  3. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    what's the advantage, technically, of doing this?
     
  4. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    Not that much really. Just occasionally do a defrag of the system files, which PD does and that include the MFT.

    Pete
     
  5. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    From back in the days of FAT and FAT32 file systems, excessive fragmentation of the $MFT (Master File Table) would indeed lead to serious performance issues with systems. But when the NTFS file system came along, this problem is handled very well.

    NTFS makes a special effort to keep this file contiguous. It reserves a percentage of the volume (partition) for exclusive use of the $MFT, until or unless the remainder of the volume is completely used up. So any space for files or directories/folders will not be allocated from this reserved zone until all other space on this partition is allocated first.

    To summarize... if the partition is formatted as a NTFS partition, the $MFT master file table cannot fracture until the entire disk has filled up. When that happens, you're in a heap of trouble anyway, especially as far as file defragmentation is concerned. I personally don't believe the fracturing of the Master File Table is a major issue of any kind at all as long as your system is on a NTFS formatted volume.
     
  6. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    On one disk I had an MFT that was "stretched" and bloated. I ran Paragon's MFT compact and it killed more than 600,000 un-used entries.
     
  7. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    Thanks peter and the frog for your explanation.
     
  8. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    c:\Users\HPG7\Downloads\Contig>contig -v -s $mft

    Contig v1.7 - Makes files contiguous
    Copyright (C) 1998-2012 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

    ------------------------
    Processing c:\$Mft:
    Scanning file...
    c:\$Mft is already in 1 fragment.
    ------------------------
    Processing c:\$Mft::$BITMAP:
    Scanning file...
    c:\$Mft::$BITMAP is already in 1 fragment.
    ------------------------
    Summary:
    Number of files processed : 2
    Number of files defragmented: 0
    All files were either already defragmented or unable to be defragmented.
     
  9. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    So just like Peter and the Frog said, on a NTFS file system (I have my system running for like a couple of years already), the MFT does look like still contiguous even for an old system.
     
  10. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Re: what program do you use to defrag the mtf?

    O... that single fragment for the $MFT *IS* the reserve zone... it's the way the system's built... FYI!
     
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