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    How To Increase MFT File Size?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Rodster, Oct 22, 2015.

  1. Rodster

    Rodster Merica

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    My MFT on my gaming rig increases and becomes 2 fragments. Is there a way to increase the MFT or to defragment the MFT? I would like to bring it back to 1 fragment if possible.

    I've tried the following to no avail:

    1) Contig defrag
    2) JKDefrag
    3) Auslogics Pro
    4) Registry edit to increase the size. The size stayed the same. http://www.allpctips.in/2008/01/increase-mft-size.html
     
    Rodster, Oct 22, 2015
    #1
  2. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    The only way to defrag that I know of is to dismount the drive. This may mean pulling the drive and defraging it on another machine even in an enclosure. One possible trick though.

    That is back up the system image to an external, then reformat and put the backup back in. This may reorganize the MFT etc..
     
    TANWare, Oct 23, 2015
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    Rodster likes this.
  3. Rodster

    Rodster Merica

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    Thanks for the info. In my experiment I found what keeps the MFT at 1 fragment. If you disable system restore especially during the initial update for (total of 6 KB update patches) Windows 8.1 Pro on a clean install, the MFT stays at 1 fragment. If I allow for system restores which by default will become automatically enabled with the first KB patch update it will create a system restore. I manually disabled system restore and the MFT stays at 1 fragment. The MFT grew from it's initial size of 65 MB to 170MB and still stayed at 1 fragment. Previous to the that the MFT would fragment when it grew to 170 MB after the installation of the MS required 6 KB patches on a clean install.

    I tried this a total of 5 times and it was a 100% success rate.

    That said, I did a little more research and found out it means nothing as the MFT used in Windows 8/8.1/10 is more advanced these days and doesn't impact system performance even if you have between 2-3 MFT fragments.
     
    Rodster, Nov 7, 2015
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  4. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    Other option is get a SSD and forget worrying about fragments.
     
    TANWare, Nov 7, 2015
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  5. Rodster

    Rodster Merica

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    Most definitely as soon as the 2 TB SSD's are priced at $80. They have been dropping in price but i'm still on the fence regarding SSD's because of pricing. The trend in PC games is that they are increasing in size. I have quite a few PC games and they on average weigh in at around 40-50 GB a piece.
     
    Rodster, Nov 7, 2015
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  6. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    You have a bit of a wait there.
     
    TANWare, Nov 7, 2015
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