How to resize $MFT  

Hi to all,

Hi, I am trying the latest version of windows 10 on my laptop and I am doing some cleaning to load the system faster, I would also like to resize the $ MFT. How can I do?

Paul Black said:

Hello @einstein1969,




I would personally leave well alone as it will NOT have ANY really significant affect on the OS. The MFT is the control centre of the NTFS partition. It holds at least one entry for EVERY file on the NTFS Volume. This includes the size, time, date, permissions, and content, etc.

If you MUST attempt this, I am sure that there are some 3rd-Party applications available.

I hope this helps.

Can you tell me which applications do it?

Paul Black said:

Hello @einstein1969,




As I have NEVER performed this, I can only suggest that you Google for Applications.

I hope this helps.

I did not find anything, I asked here on purpose

I've never messed with the MFT myself, but from some reading it seems that tools like Paragon Hard Disk Manager have the ability to defrag and to compact (shrink) the size of the MFT. But as stated, I have 0 experience with using any of these tools, so be careful.

I tried to take a system image (using the windows 7 backup and restore function) and then restore it, hoping it would format the disk, but it didn't work, apparently it doesn't format like I had read somewhere.

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pparks1 said:

I've never messed with the MFT myself, but from some reading it seems that tools like Paragon Hard Disk Manager have the ability to defrag and to compact (shrink) the size of the MFT. But as stated, I have 0 experience with using any of these tools, so be careful.

I have a backup, so I'm calm, I was just looking for a free application, that's a paid one.

dalchina said:

Can't quite see how the 2 are related, or why you would wish to take such an unusual step.

As for a backup, a backup of some files is quite different to a complete disk image. In this case you should definitely have the latter before delving into areas best left alone.

The smaller the partition, the shorter the disk seek time.

I have a backup of the files and a system image, I just didn't want to reinstall from scratch.

The system now takes up about 13GB and is very fast but I am pushing hard and as the mft is unusually large (maybe because I did an upgrade) I wanted to reduce it.

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pparks1 said:

I've never messed with the MFT myself, but from some reading it seems that tools like Paragon Hard Disk Manager have the ability to defrag and to compact (shrink) the size of the MFT. But as stated, I have 0 experience with using any of these tools, so be careful.

I have installed the trial version of "Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Business". At the first attempt to compact the MFT it gave an error in the offline phase and at the next restart windows did not start anymore, it gave a BOSD blue screen with a qr code.
I had to restore the backup, but now I have a problem with the temporary license not activating. I have opened a support ticket and am waiting for a response.

I would like to do an update.

Unfortunately Paragon Hard Disk Manager is not working well. It crashes the system or otherwise crashes because it cannot complete the operation.

I had a continuous exchange with the support but in the end they didn't solve the problem, in the end I deduced that they were just looking for customers for their software.

However, if anyone is interested I have found a method to make this work by trial and error.

I have a video and a lot of documentation somewhere, if anyone is interested let me know that I will speed up the process of sharing the complete procedure.

Einstein1969