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By default on a freshly installed system with plenty of free space on a disk, where are the NTFS reserved area located on the disk? What percentage of the way through the disk is it located at? Under any conditions does the reserved area move? Are there more than one reserved areas?

Is it different on Windows 7/8/8.1 or Server 2008r2/2012/2012r2?

I'm using MyDefrag and would like to make it put the MFT and other NTFS files actually inside the area Windows reserves for them just before the area reserved for their growth.

Edit: From what I can tell the below MFT locations (from fsutil) are their cluster number, but the length is in bytes (in hexidecimal).

NTFS Volume Serial Number :       
Version :                         3.1
Number Sectors :                  0x00000000253f97ff
Total Clusters :                  0x0000000004a7f2ff
Free Clusters  :                  0x00000000018aecb2
Total Reserved :                  0x0000000000000760
Bytes Per Sector  :               512
Bytes Per Physical Sector :       4096
Bytes Per Cluster :               4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment    : 1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Mft Valid Data Length :           0x00000000197c0000
Mft Start Lcn  :                  0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn :                  0x0000000000000002
Mft Zone Start :                  0x0000000000b4c1e0
Mft Zone End   :                  0x0000000000b4ff20
RM Identifier:

Though I'm a little hazy as to their meanings. At the Lcn 0xC0000 there are 4 "MFT Locked Clusters" and just before the Lcn 0xC0000 there is an empty cluster and just before that is the file C:\$Bitmap, however the C:\$MFT file is just before the Mft Zone Start location 0xb4c1e0.

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  • Properly set up, Windows 7 automatically defrags. Doesn't really care where micro-managers wish to shove stuff and will move it the moment the fiddling quits. Seriously, what's the point of this? Mar 21, 2014 at 1:35
  • Because I want to replace the standard Windows defrag as my usage pattern is not being catered for by the standard defrag tool. Secondly, I'm not limiting this question to Windows 7. Mar 21, 2014 at 3:48
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    make it put the MFT and other NTFS files actually inside the area Windows reserves for them. The reserved area is placed just outside the MFT sections so that MFT growth does not fragment the MFT. That's why it's called Reserved. You can't have reserved space if you've already stuffed the MFT in it, kind of defeats the purpose of reserving the space. Mar 22, 2014 at 16:18
  • Touché, I've edit the question to reflect that the reserved area is reserved for growth of the MTFS files, not the files themselves. Mar 23, 2014 at 4:13

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You can find out where the MFT reserved zone is located by running "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo DRIVELETTER:" at an elevated command prompt. I will wait until Microsoft documents their filesystem to answer the other questions ...

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The "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo" is a bit confusing for me too, as alternative i suggest to try Sysinternals Ntfsinfo.

You can view exactly where the Reserved MFT Space is allocated with Piriform Defragger (the Purple blocks in the map).

Reportedly In Windows7 and Server 2008 the mft zone is allocated in blocks of 200MB (default value).

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