What is "Reserved System Space" and what can I do with it?

I'm running XP Pro, SP2.

I recently did two things.

First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents up to
another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the contents.

Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my system.
When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper reports that over 10% is
"Reserved System Space". This is an order of magnitude more than on any of my
other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or even my one 500 Gbyte drive.

Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says no.) If such a
large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean that it will never be used
for my data? Is there any way to shrink this allocation?

I hope this is the right place to ask this.

Cyril N. Alberga

No its not an error, its referering to the Master File Table, MFT
If you check Diskkeeper options there should be one to configure the MFT, if
required
NB This is not avilable in Diskeeper Home Edition

"Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>
> I recently did two things.
>
> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents up to
> another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the contents.
>
> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper reports
> that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order of magnitude
> more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or even my one 500
> Gbyte drive.
>
> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says no.) If
> such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean that it will
> never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink this allocation?
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>
> Cyril N. Alberga

See: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780063

JS

"Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>
> I recently did two things.
>
> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents up to
> another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the contents.
>
> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper reports
> that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order of magnitude
> more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or even my one 500
> Gbyte drive.
>
> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says no.) If
> such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean that it will
> never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink this allocation?
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>
> Cyril N. Alberga

Sadly, that is what I have. If I were to repeat my backup/format/restore is
there a way to persuade XP to make a more reasonable allocation?

Cyril

DL wrote:
> No its not an error, its referering to the Master File Table, MFT
> If you check Diskkeeper options there should be one to configure the MFT, if
> required
> NB This is not avilable in Diskeeper Home Edition
>
> "Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
> news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>
>> I recently did two things.
>>
>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents up to
>> another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the contents.
>>
>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
>> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper reports
>> that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order of magnitude
>> more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or even my one 500
>> Gbyte drive.
>>
>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says no.) If
>> such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean that it will
>> never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink this allocation?
>>
>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>
>> Cyril N. Alberga
>
>

Thank you -- I think... I followed the instructions, there were 12% of the disk
reserved, and I pushed it down to 1% (a bit over 1 gig). But diskeeper still
thinks there is a hugh chunk. Do I have to shutdown and restart before I see
the effects?

Cyril

JS wrote:
> See: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780063
>
> JS
>
> "Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
> news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>
>> I recently did two things.
>>
>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents up to
>> another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the contents.
>>
>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
>> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper reports
>> that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order of magnitude
>> more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or even my one 500
>> Gbyte drive.
>>
>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says no.) If
>> such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean that it will
>> never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink this allocation?
>>
>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>
>> Cyril N. Alberga
>
>

Don't know as I'm no longer running Disk Keeper.
Reboot and see if it DK reports the correct value.

JS

"Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:%23jgMuaeiIHA.2304@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Thank you -- I think... I followed the instructions, there were 12% of
> the disk reserved, and I pushed it down to 1% (a bit over 1 gig). But
> diskeeper still thinks there is a hugh chunk. Do I have to shutdown and
> restart before I see the effects?
>
> Cyril
>
> JS wrote:
>> See: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780063
>>
>> JS
>>
>> "Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
>> news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>>
>>> I recently did two things.
>>>
>>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents up
>>> to another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the contents.
>>>
>>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
>>> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper reports
>>> that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order of magnitude
>>> more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or even my one 500
>>> Gbyte drive.
>>>
>>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says no.)
>>> If such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean that it
>>> will never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink this
>>> allocation?
>>>
>>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>>
>>> Cyril N. Alberga
>>

You say your hd's are 250, 300 & 500gb
The reserved space will vary on each one at 12% your 500 will have approx
60gb
You dont combine the MFT's sizes
Lowering the MFT could lead to file/sys problems
Because the space is 'reserved' doesnt meant it cannot be used

"Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:%23jgMuaeiIHA.2304@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Thank you -- I think... I followed the instructions, there were 12% of
> the disk reserved, and I pushed it down to 1% (a bit over 1 gig). But
> diskeeper still thinks there is a hugh chunk. Do I have to shutdown and
> restart before I see the effects?
>
> Cyril
>
> JS wrote:
>> See: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780063
>>
>> JS
>>
>> "Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
>> news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>>
>>> I recently did two things.
>>>
>>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents up
>>> to another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the contents.
>>>
>>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
>>> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper reports
>>> that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order of magnitude
>>> more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or even my one 500
>>> Gbyte drive.
>>>
>>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says no.)
>>> If such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean that it
>>> will never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink this
>>> allocation?
>>>
>>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>>
>>> Cyril N. Alberga
>>

You can't push the MFT Zone reservation to 1%. The
NtfsMftZoneReservation is set in the registry, possible values for the
entry and the corresponding reserved space are:

1 = 12.5%
2 = 25%
3 = 37.5%
4 = 50%

You already have this set to the lowest possible value.

Because MFT fragmentation can degrade performance the file system
preemptively reserves a large contiguous block for the MFT when the
drive is formatted. This space isn't lost, it will be used when needed.
If the disk runs out of space for files the file system will relent
and yield space for the files from the MFT zone. The opposite is also
true, if the MFT zone fills up it will take space from the available
(free) disk space for its needs. When either of these happen the MFT
will become fragmented and the built in disk defragmenter will not be
able to defragment it. Also note that small files of 1KB or less are
stored in the MFT.

John

Cyril N. Alberga wrote:

> Thank you -- I think... I followed the instructions, there were 12% of
> the disk reserved, and I pushed it down to 1% (a bit over 1 gig). But
> diskeeper still thinks there is a hugh chunk. Do I have to shutdown and
> restart before I see the effects?
>
> Cyril
>
> JS wrote:
>
>> See: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780063
>>
>> JS
>>
>> "Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
>> news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>
>>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>>
>>> I recently did two things.
>>>
>>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents
>>> up to another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the
>>> contents.
>>>
>>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
>>> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper
>>> reports that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order
>>> of magnitude more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives, or
>>> even my one 500 Gbyte drive.
>>>
>>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says
>>> no.) If such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean
>>> that it will never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink
>>> this allocation?
>>>
>>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>>
>>> Cyril N. Alberga
>>
>>
>>

Perhaps I see what is happening then. All the disks were set to 12%, which is
the highest that "My Computer" seems to allow, while 1% is the lowest. I had
tried the 1% values based on someone up-thread saying that 750 Mbytes (I think)
should be sufficient, and 1% gave over 2 Gbytes. My confusion was based on the
fact that all the other disks had much smaller areas marked as "reserved", even
though they are shown as 12% in the "property" box. I suppose the space has
been used for data files, as most of the disks are fairly full.

Thanks to everyone who has helped clear up my puzzlement.

Cyril

John John wrote:
> You can't push the MFT Zone reservation to 1%. The
> NtfsMftZoneReservation is set in the registry, possible values for the
> entry and the corresponding reserved space are:
>
> 1 = 12.5%
> 2 = 25%
> 3 = 37.5%
> 4 = 50%
>
> You already have this set to the lowest possible value.
>
> Because MFT fragmentation can degrade performance the file system
> preemptively reserves a large contiguous block for the MFT when the
> drive is formatted. This space isn't lost, it will be used when needed.
> If the disk runs out of space for files the file system will relent and
> yield space for the files from the MFT zone. The opposite is also true,
> if the MFT zone fills up it will take space from the available (free)
> disk space for its needs. When either of these happen the MFT will
> become fragmented and the built in disk defragmenter will not be able to
> defragment it. Also note that small files of 1KB or less are stored in
> the MFT.
>
> John
>
> Cyril N. Alberga wrote:
>
>> Thank you -- I think... I followed the instructions, there were 12%
>> of the disk reserved, and I pushed it down to 1% (a bit over 1 gig).
>> But diskeeper still thinks there is a hugh chunk. Do I have to
>> shutdown and restart before I see the effects?
>>
>> Cyril
>>
>> JS wrote:
>>
>>> See: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780063
>>>
>>> JS
>>>
>>> "Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
>>> news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>>
>>>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>>>
>>>> I recently did two things.
>>>>
>>>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it contents
>>>> up to another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then restored the
>>>> contents.
>>>>
>>>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on my
>>>> system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper
>>>> reports that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an order
>>>> of magnitude more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte drives,
>>>> or even my one 500 Gbyte drive.
>>>>
>>>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says
>>>> no.) If such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that mean
>>>> that it will never be used for my data? Is there any way to shrink
>>>> this allocation?
>>>>
>>>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>>>
>>>> Cyril N. Alberga
>>>
>>>
>>>
>

Cyril N. Alberga wrote:
> Perhaps I see what is happening then. All the disks were set to 12%,
> which is the highest that "My Computer" seems to allow, while 1% is
> the lowest. I had tried the 1% values based on someone up-thread
> saying that 750 Mbytes (I think) should be sufficient, and 1% gave
> over 2 Gbytes. My confusion was based on the fact that all the other
> disks had much smaller areas marked as "reserved", even though they
> are shown as 12% in the "property" box. I suppose the space has been
> used for data files, as most of the disks are fairly full.
> Thanks to everyone who has helped clear up my puzzlement.
>
> Cyril
>
> John John wrote:
>> You can't push the MFT Zone reservation to 1%. The
>> NtfsMftZoneReservation is set in the registry, possible values for
>> the entry and the corresponding reserved space are:
>>
>> 1 = 12.5%
>> 2 = 25%
>> 3 = 37.5%
>> 4 = 50%
>>
>> You already have this set to the lowest possible value.
>>
>> Because MFT fragmentation can degrade performance the file system
>> preemptively reserves a large contiguous block for the MFT when the
>> drive is formatted. This space isn't lost, it will be used when
>> needed. If the disk runs out of space for files the file system
>> will relent and yield space for the files from the MFT zone. The
>> opposite is also true, if the MFT zone fills up it will take space
>> from the available (free) disk space for its needs. When either of
>> these happen the MFT will become fragmented and the built in disk
>> defragmenter will not be able to defragment it. Also note that
>> small files of 1KB or less are stored in the MFT.
>>
>> John
>>
>> Cyril N. Alberga wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you -- I think... I followed the instructions, there were 12%
>>> of the disk reserved, and I pushed it down to 1% (a bit over 1 gig).
>>> But diskeeper still thinks there is a hugh chunk. Do I have to
>>> shutdown and restart before I see the effects?
>>>
>>> Cyril
>>>
>>> JS wrote:
>>>
>>>> See: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780063
>>>>
>>>> JS
>>>>
>>>> "Cyril N. Alberga" <calberga@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
>>>> news:eDiboQdiIHA.4536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>>>
>>>>> I'm running XP Pro, SP2.
>>>>>
>>>>> I recently did two things.
>>>>>
>>>>> First, I took a 250 GByte FAT external harddrive, backed it
>>>>> contents up to another drive and reformatted it as NTFS, then
>>>>> restored the contents.
>>>>>
>>>>> Second, I installed an incremental defrag program, Diskeeper, on
>>>>> my system. When I looked at the newly reformatted drive Diskeeper
>>>>> reports that over 10% is "Reserved System Space". This is an
>>>>> order of magnitude more than on any of my other 250 or 300 Gbyte
>>>>> drives, or even my one 500 Gbyte drive.
>>>>>
>>>>> Could this be an error in the defrag program? (The company says
>>>>> no.) If such a large chunk of the drive is reserved does that
>>>>> mean that it will never be used for my data? Is there any way to
>>>>> shrink this allocation?
>>>>>
>>>>> I hope this is the right place to ask this.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cyril N. Alberga

Do not confuse the MFT with system restore.

--
Mike Pawlak