| Re: What is "Reserved System Space" and what can I do with it? |
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Group: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics · Group Profile
Author: Cyril N. AlbergaCyril N. Alberga Date: Mar 19, 2008 14:43
Perhaps I see what is happening then. All the disks were set to 12%%, which is
the highest that "My Computer" seems to allow, while 1%% is the lowest. I had
tried the 1%% values based on someone up-thread saying that 750 Mbytes (I think)
should be sufficient, and 1%% gave over 2 Gbytes. My confusion was based on the
fact that all the other disks had much smaller areas marked as "reserved", even
though they are shown as 12%% in the "property" box. I suppose the space has
been used for data files, as most of the disks are fairly full.
Thanks to everyone who has helped clear up my puzzlement.
Cyril
John John wrote:
> You can't push the MFT Zone reservation to 1%%. The
> NtfsMftZoneReservation is set in the registry, possible values for the
> entry and the corresponding reserved space are:
>
> 1 = 12.5%%
> 2 = 25%%
> 3 = 37.5%%
> 4 = 50%%
>
> You already have this set to the lowest possible value.
>
> Because MFT fragmentation can degrade performance the file system
> preemptively reserves a large contiguous block for the MFT when the
> drive is formatted. This space isn't lost, it will be used when needed.
> If the disk runs out of space for files the file system will relent and
> yield space for the files from the MFT zone. The opposite is also true,
> if the MFT zone fills up it will take space from the available (free)
> disk space for its needs. When either of these happen the MFT will
> become fragmented and the built in disk defragmenter will not be able to
> defragment it. Also note that small files of 1KB or less are stored in
> the MFT.
>
> John
>
> Cyril N. Alberga wrote:
>
>> Thank you -- I think... I followed the instructions, there were 12%%
>> of the disk reserved, and I pushed it down to 1%% (a bit over 1 gig).
>> But diskeeper still thinks there is a hugh chunk. Do I have to
>> shutdown and restart before I see the effects?
>>
>> Cyril
>>
>> JS wrote:
>>
>>>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>>>
>>>> I recently did two things.
>>>>
>>>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents
>>>> up to another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the
>>>> contents.
>>>>
>>>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
>>>> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper
>>>> reports that over 10%% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order
>>>> of magnitude more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives,
>>>> or even my one 500 Gbyte drive.
>>>>
>>>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says
>>>> no.) If such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean
>>>> that it will never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink
>>>> this allocation?
>>>>
>>>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>>>
>>>> Cyril N. Alberga
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
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