Windows 2000 MFT DeFrag

I know this has been gone over, but I could not find anything dealing with the specifics of what I am asking.

I have Windows 2000 and it suddenly fragged up to 6.5% (per Norton’s, noting that the version I have was not tested with Win 2000 SP4, but I use it for checks and analysis).

Upshot is that after 5 years of Win 2000 and no problems, I had a really long re-boot the other day, and Norton’s showed up with the MFT which I had never seen, as well as . Windows DeFragger when I knew what to look for showed the following.

Total MFT Size: 71,392
MFT Record Count: 56,742
Percent MFT in Use: 79
Total MFT Fragments: 2743


Percentage MFT in Use: is now up to 83%
Used disk space is 15%

First why would it suddenly frag up the MFT? Ok if there is no answer for that, but its certainly a question, nothing has changed or been added.

This did occur right after running CC cleaner, though that’s been used for years now. Norton’s files that still have some fragmentation do seem associated with CC cleanup.

Upshot is that this looks to be a developing problem not from a performance standpoint (its now working ok), but know the MFT is going to expand, and still be messed up.

O&O seesm to have the mostly highly regarded defrag on bootup (which I also gather is the only way to get to the MFT on the Windows 2000 version).

Does their free download (limited capability) clean that up? I want to test it first, and or do not need all the full features.

 

Very small files of approx 1 kB or lower are stored directly in the MFT itself. The only explanation I can think of is that during the cleaning run, CCC somehow deleted some of those files, resulting in gaps appearing in the MFT (which is not close to being full otherwise and therefore should not have fragmented due to non-contiguous expansion). Not 100% sure if the above reasoning is correct..:-o

As for defragging the MFT, Diskeeper 2009 Pro (the defragger I use on XP) defrags all but 2 or 3 fragments during its normal auto defrag operation. It needs to do a boot-time defrag only for the last 2 fragments or so. But not sure if online MFT defrag is available for Win2k; you may need to do a full boot-time defrag. The DK2009 free trial version works just like the full version for a month (disables itself after that unless you buy it) so you can check it out.

I've never tried a boot-time defrag with O&O...in general I don't like it's interface and overly complicated menus/operation so I don't use it.

 

I have started to experimnet. I got the O&O download. Ran it in the bootup DeFrag mode.

I agree on the complicated O&O Control Panel.

The only thing I know is XP has the capability to DeFrag the MFT, and Win 2000 does not.

It did not clean up the MFT file, results afterwards were about the same, however, once the screen came up, the system was ready to go a whole lot quicker.

Email off to O&O with the results that currently are as follows.



\$MFT 2742

\RECYCLER\NPROTECT\05361927.$EC 31

\winnt\Temp\WFV1.tmp 13

\scriptlog.txt 4

\WINNT\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb 3

\Documents and Settings\DDC\Local Settings\Application 3

\Program Files\CA\DSM\logs\TRC_CF_REGISTER_0.log 2

\Program Files\CA\DSM\logs\TRC_CSMAGENT_0.log 2

\Program Files\CA\DSM\logs\TRC_DtsAgent_0.log 2



Fragmentation report is 5.9%, MFT obviously being the culprit here





Win 2000 own DeFrag report:





Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 71,392 KB
MFT record count = 58,991
Percent MFT in use = 82 %
Total MFT fragments = 2,743

 

Well, the read it and weep on this is I found O&O to be pretty useless overall.

1. It will not deal with the MFT fragmentation, though they claim it will. What they do is hide behind statistics. Norton’s assess the system as around 6% fragmented, O&O says .413. Obviously you can do anything with statistics. When I asked, they said it would deal with it, when I sent them the post DeFrag log, they then sent this back.

Dear Mr XXXXXX

Thank you for your e-mail. The report shows that the degree of fragmentation is only 0.453%, which is almost perfect.
(Mainly caused by C:\$MFT & C:\WINNT\Temp\WFV1.tmp)

In some cases it is may be not possible to defragment the MFT entirely, eg. Windows keeps a small part of the MFT (its first 16 records) locked and we cannot move these records.

So, why do they not say so in the first place? I sent them the information as to where it was. It literally did NOTHING to the MFT as far as De-Frag.

2. While the machine comes on line faster, program access after doing their de-frag is slower than dirt. Obviously their choice is not what works in the real world for file locations. Oddly, as time goes by it gets quicker.

I give O&O a thumbs down. It does nothing that the built in de-frag doesn't do, its slow doing what it does.

Perfect Disk says theirs will clean up the MFT. I will see,