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By default on a freshly installed system with plenty of free space on a disk, where are the NTFS reserved area located on the disk? What percentage of the way through the disk is it located at? Under any conditions does the reserved area move? Are there more than one reserved areas?
Is it different on Windows 7/8/8.1 or Server 2008r2/2012/2012r2?
I'm using MyDefrag and would like to make it put the MFT and other NTFS files actually inside the area Windows reserves for them just before the area reserved for their growth.
Edit: From what I can tell the below MFT locations (from fsutil) are their cluster number, but the length is in bytes (in hexidecimal).
NTFS Volume Serial Number : Version : 3.1 Number Sectors : 0x00000000253f97ff Total Clusters : 0x0000000004a7f2ff Free Clusters : 0x00000000018aecb2 Total Reserved : 0x0000000000000760 Bytes Per Sector : 512 Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096 Bytes Per Cluster : 4096 Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 1024 Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0 Mft Valid Data Length : 0x00000000197c0000 Mft Start Lcn : 0x00000000000c0000 Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x0000000000000002 Mft Zone Start : 0x0000000000b4c1e0 Mft Zone End : 0x0000000000b4ff20 RM Identifier:
Though I'm a little hazy as to their meanings. At the Lcn 0xC0000 there are 4 "MFT Locked Clusters" and just before the Lcn 0xC0000 there is an empty cluster and just before that is the file C:\$Bitmap, however the C:\$MFT file is just before the Mft Zone Start location 0xb4c1e0.
BeowulfNode42
Posted 2014-03-21T00:45:59.877
Reputation: 1 629
Properly set up, Windows 7 automatically defrags. Doesn't really care where micro-managers wish to shove stuff and will move it the moment the fiddling quits. Seriously, what's the point of this? – Fiasco Labs – 2014-03-21T01:35:07.403
Because I want to replace the standard Windows defrag as my usage pattern is not being catered for by the standard defrag tool. Secondly, I'm not limiting this question to Windows 7. – BeowulfNode42 – 2014-03-21T03:48:36.930
1make it put the MFT and other NTFS files actually inside the area Windows reserves for them. The reserved area is placed just outside the MFT sections so that MFT growth does not fragment the MFT. That's why it's called Reserved. You can't have reserved space if you've already stuffed the MFT in it, kind of defeats the purpose of reserving the space. – Fiasco Labs – 2014-03-22T16:18:59.250
Touché, I've edit the question to reflect that the reserved area is reserved for growth of the MTFS files, not the files themselves. – BeowulfNode42 – 2014-03-23T04:13:20.977