Optimize the NTFS system of Win 2000

When installing Windows 2000, do you need to choose whether to use the FAT32 File System or the NTFS file system? This is actually a very simple problem, there is only one reason not to choose the NTFS file system, that is, you still need to use an operating system that can not read NTFS partition, such as Win9x, MS-DOS, etc.

About NTFS

NTFS is short for the new technology file system. Microsoft launched the NTFS file system to make up for some shortcomings of the FAT file system. The biggest improvement is fault tolerance and security performance.

Fault Tolerance

NTFS can automatically fix disk errors without displaying error messages. When Windows 2000 writes a file to an NTFS partition, it retains a copy of the file in the partition, and then checks whether the file written to the disk is consistent with that in the memory. If the two are inconsistent, Windows will mark the corresponding sector as a bad sector instead of using it (cluster re- ing), and then copy and re-write files to the disk using the files retained in the memory. If an error occurs while reading the file, NTFS returns a read error message and notifies the corresponding application that data has been lost.

Security

NTFS has many security performance options, which can protect files and directories on the local machine and remotely. NTFS also supports encrypted file systems (EFS) to prevent unauthorized users from accessing files.

File compression

Another benefit of the NTFS file system is its support for File compression. You can choose to compress a single file or the entire folder.

Disk Quota

The disk quota function allows the system administrator to manage the disk space allocated to each user. Valid users can only access their own files. The Disk Quota function in Windows 2000 is based on users and volumes.

Optimize NTFS Performance

You can determine many factors that affect NTFS Volume performance. The most important factors include the NTFS Volume type (SCSI or IDE), speed (Disk RPM), and the number of disks contained in the volume. In addition to the above factors, the following factors can also affect the performance of NTFS volumes:

· Size of the cluster and space allocation unit.

· Whether the volume is directly created or converted from a FAT volume.

· Whether the volume uses the NTFS compression function.

· Fragments and locations in frequently accessed files. For example, the main file table (MFT), directory, files that contain NTFS frequently used data, buffer files, and frequently used user files.

Cluster size

Select the cluster size based on the average size and type of the files to be stored in the NTFS Volume. Ideally, the cluster size should be able to remove the file size (the closest value), and the ideal cluster size can minimize the I/O time, and maximize the disk space. It should be noted that the use of clusters larger than 4 kb under any circumstances will have the following negative effects:

· The disk fragment tool cannot sort the volume.

· The NTFS file compression function cannot be used.

· Increase in wasted disk space

There are several ways to determine the average file size. One way is to select "run" from the "Start" button, Type cmd in the "open" box, and click OK, then run chkdsk in the command line mode to remove the disk space used by the number of files on the volume. Another method is to use performance monitor. Choose Start> Settings> Control Panel> Management Tools> performance, and track the average disk Bytes/transmission of Logical Disk objects, this method can be used to obtain more precise file sizes and Data Types stored on this volume.

NTFS converted from FAT

The volume converted from FAT to NTFS will lose some of the performance advantages of NTFS. MFT may be fragmented, and NTFS file access permissions cannot be set on the root volume.

To check whether there are fragments on MFT, use the following method: Start> program> accessories> System Tools> disk fragmentation to analyze a drive, click View Report and scroll to MFT fragment.

After a FAT volume is converted to NTFS, the cluster size is 512 bytes, which increases the possibility of fragmentation and takes more time to organize fragments. For the above reason, it is best to format the hard disk into an NTFS file system during initial formatting.

NTFS file Compression

The NTFS compression function compresses the entire directory tree of a single file, entire folder, or NTFS Volume. Using the compression function will lead to a reduction in NTFS Volume performance, 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, and re-compress the copied file, greatly increasing the CPU processing time. It should be noted that the NTFS compression function is more efficient on Windows 2000 Professional Edition than on Windows 2000 Server Edition.

You can compress files, folders, and NTFS volumes in the Properties dialog box of the browser window.

Fragment

When fragments occur on a disk, the head needs more motion when accessing a file, which has a great negative impact on performance. Maintaining fragments on a disk at a low level is the most important factor to improve NTFS Volume performance. You can often run the fragment tool to complete this task.

The disk fragment tool of Windows 2000 allows you to quickly analyze a volume and give you suggestions on whether to organize the volume.

Disable non-essential NTFS Functions

Do not create short file names. NTFS also supports file names in 8.3 format to maintain compatibility with MS-DOS and Windows 3.x. If you do not want to support these systems, go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control FileSystem in the Registry and change the value of NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation from 0 to 1.

· Prohibit recent access updates. When you switch back and forth between directories, NTFS will update the date/time labels of the recently accessed directories. On a large NTFS Volume, NTFS will reduce the performance of NTFS volumes. In the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control FileSystem, change the value of NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate from 0 to 1 to disable the automatic update function. If this entry does not exist, add it to the Registry.

Reserve proper space for the master file table (MFT. MFT plays an important role in NTFS volumes and has a great impact on its performance. MFT is frequently accessed during system space allocation and disk read/write operations, therefore, MFT has a crucial impact on the performance of NTFS volumes. The NTFS file system developers reserve a specific area near MFT to reduce fragments in MFT. By default, this area accounts for 12.5% of the total volume size, although this area can minimize fragments in MFT, it is not always appropriate. To manage MFT space, you can add NtfsMftZoneReservation of REG_DWORD type in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control FileSystem. The default value is 1, the range is 1-4 (1 indicates that MFT accounts for 12.5% of the entire volume, 2 indicates 25%, 3 indicates 37.5%, and 4 indicates 50% ).

You must change the registry before creating an NTFS Volume. Modification to the registry only affects the NTFS volumes created since then, and does not affect the existing volumes. These volumes will keep the original MFT settings. Allocating more space for MFT does not affect normal storage space, because once the normal file storage space is full, NTFS will use the MFT area, sometimes this is why MFT is more likely to have fragments. Therefore, we must pay attention to the storage space occupied by user files and reserve a certain amount of available space on the volume, so that MFT can have enough reserved space.

The default 12.5% setting of NtfsMftZoneReservation is sufficient for most users. Taking my usage as an example, the MFT size is 74,331 KB. There are about 73000 files on this volume, and the average file size is 111KB. Because the volume size is 9 GB, the reserved space for MFT is 1152 MB, which is enough.