Windows XP - mft, how many should there be?

Hi,

not sure if this is a problem or not, but I have a mft file on every drive and every partition. I always thought that there was only meant to be one. If there is only meant to be one then how do I stop XP creating more. BTW, when I created the partitions, all the options were greyed out except for Logical Disk.

 for every file on an NTFS volume, including the MFT itself.

NTFS uses MFT entries to define the files to which they correspond. All information about a file, including its size, time and date stamps, permissions, and data content is either stored in MFT entries or in space external to the MFT but described by the MFT entries.

For more information browse: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS

http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/sgp-tweaks.ars

Found this at experts exchange
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_21870205.html
It mentions a registry tweak that works under XP and also a program called PerfectDisk which has a free evaluation. Couldnt find much more on it myself after that.

 

You can only increase the MFT, you can't decrease it once it's expanded. Basic details of MFT here, and an explanation of the available options in Windows XP which affect MFT are in this Microsoft Article.

 

If you mean artificially expand the MFT size, then really you're better off just getting a program like Diskeeper which allows you to manually set the size of the MFT (only making it larger though, not smaller), and also defragments the MFT whenever you set it for a boot-time defrag job. You can use the trial version of Diskeeper to do that for free.

http://www.tweakxp.com/article37043.aspx