Optimizing NTFS System under Windows 2000

  

Introduction to NTFS NTFS is an abbreviation for "New Technology File System". Microsoft introduced the NTFS file system to compensate for some of the shortcomings of the FAT file system. The biggest improvement is fault tolerance and security. Fault Tolerance NTFS can automatically repair disk errors without displaying an error message. When Windows 2000 writes a file to an NTFS partition, it keeps a copy of the file inside, and then checks if the file written to the disk is consistent with the one in the memory. If the two are inconsistent, Windows marks the corresponding sector as a bad sector and no longer uses it (cluster remapping), and then rewrites the file to disk with a copy of the file retained in memory. If an error occurs while reading the file, NTFS returns a read error message and informs the corresponding application that the data has been lost. Security NTFS has many security options that protect files and directories on the machine and remotely. NTFS also supports Encrypting File System (EFS), which prevents unauthorized users from accessing files. File Compression Another benefit of the NTFS file system is support for file compression, which allows users to choose to compress a single file or an entire folder. Disk Quota The Disk Quota feature allows system administrators to manage the disk space allocated to individual users. Legitimate users can only access their own files. The disk quota feature in Windows 2000 is based on users and volumes. Optimizing the Performance of NTFS Users can determine many factors that affect the performance of NTFS volumes. The more important ones are the type of NTFS volume (SCSI or IDE), the speed (RPM of the disk), the number of disks the volume contains, and so on. In addition to the above factors, the following factors can also affect the performance of NTFS volumes: · the size of clusters and space allocation units. · Whether the volume was created directly or converted from a FAT volume. · Whether the volume uses NTFS compression. · Fragments and locations in frequently accessed files. For example, the main file table (MFT), directories, files containing data frequently used by NTFS, buffer files, and frequently used user files. The size of the cluster Select the size of the cluster based on the average size and type of files to be stored by the NTFS volume. Ideally, the size of the cluster should be such that the file size (the closest value) is divisible. The ideal cluster size minimizes I/O time and maximizes disk space. It should be noted that the use of clusters larger than 4KB in any case will have the following negative effects: · disk defragmentation tool can not organize this volume · can not use NTFS file compression function · wasted disk space increased There are several ways to determine the average size of a file. One way is to start the "start” button, select “run", type cmd in the "open” box, click OK, then in command line mode Execute chkdsk and use the number of files on this volume to remove the used disk space. Another way is to use Performance Monitor. The method is Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Performance, and then trace the average disk bytes /transfers of logical disk objects, using this method to get more accurate file size and storage The type of data on this volume. NTFS converted from FAT A volume converted from FAT to NTFS will lose some of the performance benefits of NTFS. MFT may be fragmented and NTFS file access permissions cannot be set on the root volume. To check for fragmentation on the MFT, use the following method: Start -> Programs -> Attachments -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmentation, analyze a drive, and then click “View Report”, Use your mouse to scroll to the MFT shard. After converting a FAT volume to NTFS, the cluster size is 512 bytes, increasing the likelihood of fragmentation and more time spent defragmenting. For the above reasons, it is best to format the hard disk into an NTFS file system during the initial formatting. NTFS File Compression NTFS compression compresses the entire directory tree on a single file, an entire folder, or an NTFS volume. Using compression will cause performance degradation of NTFS volumes because each time you access a compressed file, you need to decompress it. If you want to copy a compressed file, the process is: decompress, copy, re-compress the copied file, greatly increasing the processing time of the CPU. It should be noted that NTFS compression is more efficient on Windows 2000 Professional than on Windows 2000 Server. Files, folders, and NTFS volumes can be compressed in the properties dialog of the browser window. Defragmentation When fragmentation occurs on a disk, the head needs more movement when accessing a file, which has a significant adverse effect on performance. Keeping the fragmentation on the disk at a low level is the most important factor in improving the performance of NTFS volumes. You can run the defragmentation tool frequently to do this. The Windows 2000 Disk Defragmenter tool allows you to quickly analyze a volume and suggest to you if you need to organize this volume. Disable non-essential NTFS features Prevent the creation of short file names. In order to maintain compatibility with MS-DOS and Windows 3.x, NTFS also supports file names in 8.3 format. If you do not want to support these systems, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SYSTEM \\ CurrentControlSet \\ Control \\ FileSystem in the registry and change the value of NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation from 0 to 1. · prohibits recent access updates. When switching back and forth between directories, NTFS will update the date/time stamp of the most recently accessed directory, which will degrade the performance of NTFS volumes on larger NTFS volumes. In the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SYSTEM \\ CurrentControlSet \\ Control \\ FileSystem change the value of NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate from 0 to 1, you can disable the automatic update function, if you do not have this entry, add it to the registry. Leave the appropriate space for the main file table (MFT). MFT plays an important role in NTFS volumes, which has a great impact on its performance. The system allocates space and accesses the disk frequently. The MFT has a vital impact on the performance of NTFS volumes. Developers of the NTFS file system reserve a specific area near the MFT to reduce fragmentation in the MFT. By default, this area accounts for 12.5% ​​of the entire volume size, although this area can minimize fragmentation in the MFT. But it is not always appropriate. To manage the MFT space, you can add a NtfsMftZoneReservation of type REG_DWORD to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SYSTEM \\ CurrentControlSet \\ Control \\FileSystem. Its default value is 1, and its range is 1-4 (1 means MFT occupies the entire volume. 12.5%, 2 means 25%, 3 means 37.5%, 4 means 50%). The registry must be changed before the NTFS volume is created. The modification to the registry only affects the NTFS volumes created since then, and has no effect on the existing volumes. These volumes will also maintain the original MFT settings. Allocating more space to the MFT does not affect the normal storage space, because once the normal file storage space is full, NTFS will use the MFT area, which sometimes causes the MFT area to be more susceptible to fragmentation. Therefore, we must pay attention to the storage space occupied by the user files, and reserve a certain amount of free space on the volume, so that the MFT can have enough reserved space. Regarding the setting of NtfsMftZoneReservation, its default 12.5% ​​setting is sufficient for most users. Taking my use case as an example, the size of the MFT is 74,331 KB. There are about 73,000 files on this volume, and the average file size is 111 KB. Since the size of the volume is 9GB, the reserved space of the MFT is 1152MB, which is enough.

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