Reserve Space For Your Master File Table (MFT) And Optimize Windows XP

To start with, this registry tweak applies on NTFS file systems only so IF you have FAT file system running in your system then you don’t need to worry about any MFT allocation as their isn’t any in FAT.

Master File Table is that file in NTFS file system that keeps a track of all the files in your system. As you might have guessed, this file can become huge as time progresses and it might become a very complex file too viewing the reason that it handles literally every file which is running in your NTFS computer.

Using this registry tweak you allocate fixed space for MFT so that it dosen’t clog yout hard disk.

Open registry and browse to this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem

Now in the right pane of the registry window you need to create a new DWORD value named “NtfsMftZoneReservation” (without quotes) and assign it a value of 1, 2, 3, or 4 as per your needs. Below you can understand the meaning behind these values.

* 1 is the default setting and this will reserve one-eight of the total volume for MFT.
* Setting NtfsMftZoneReservation to 2 will reserve one quarter of the total volume for MFT.
* Setting this DWORD value to 3 will reserve three eight of the total volume for MFT.
* Finally, setting this keyword to value of 4 will reserve half of the total volume for MFT.

Mostly, you won’t exceed one quarter of the total volume and hence setting NtfsMftZoneReservation to value of 2 is recommended. You will have to restart your computer after making this registry change.