I recently became aware of MFT Zone, which is one of four levels: 1, 2, 3, 4. An NTFS volume is formatted with default Level 1, or 12.5% according to Microsoft (unless user specifies different level). Each level is a mulitplier of 200MB after the initial NTFS formatting of a drive. So, if I use level 2, MFT Zone size increases in 2(200MB) chunks = 400MB. Level 3 increases in 3(200MB) = 600MB chunks. Upon initial format, 12.5% * (disk size) = MFT Zone size because default is level 1.
You can change the size of the MFT zone for newly created volumes by to correspond to a percentage of the volume to be used as the MFT zone. The MFT zone sizes follow: • Setting 1, the default, reserves approximately 12.5 percent of the volume.
• Setting 2 reserves approximately 25 percent.
• Setting 3 reserves approximately 37.5 percent.
• Setting 4 reserves approximately 50 percent.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781134(v=ws.10).aspx
So, why would a drive have an MFT Zone size less than 12.5%?