HOW TO INCREASE MFT SIZE

I am running windows XP professional. The problem is there is an application which does a lot of file I/O (nearly process 1 million files ). Initially it runs ok but with the passage time lets say after 10 hours it slows down. We discovered that within the first few hours it processes 100,000 files after that the average processing goes down to 30,000 files in an hour.

We looked at the MFT percent in use and that was 99%. REAL PATHETIC. ABOVE ALL the total MFT size was only 190 MB out of 106 GB available free size.

Clearly the MFT size is the problem. Is there a way I can increase the MFT size make it like 20 % of the total disk space. Is this parameter in our control or it is contolled by the OS?

thanks in advance.

It should be expanding -- but once it starts to expand I would think it will always be very close to full, so I'm not surprised at the 99% value.

Just to see if there's any impact (I'm skeptical since the KB article doesn't mention XP), try adding the "NtfsMftZoneReservation" value and set it to a value of 4;  then reboot; and then format a new volume with NTFS and see if that impacts your performance.

Here's the details from the KB article:

1. Run Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe), and go to the following subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
2. From the Edit menu, click Add Value.
3. Type the following information in the dialog box:
Value Name: NtfsMftZoneReservation
Data Type : REG_DWORD
Data : (valid range is 1-4)