VirtualLarry
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- Aug 25, 2001
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Windows NT Does Not Boot with Highly Fragmented MFTOriginally posted by: Nothinman
Oh please, stop pointing to problems fixed like 5 years ago. Please provide a link that says that can happen with Win2K or hell even NT 4.NTFS, on the other hand, does. Severe cases of MFT fragmentation, can actually cause the system to not boot. IOW, NTFS can literally "paint itself into a corner". Just another way in which FAT32 is superior in its simplicity, lacking corner-cases that can lead to system failure.
MS documents that it can happen with NT4, but claims that it is fixed in W2K. I thought I've read other reports that it can still happen in W2K, I'll look further. I still consider the fact that it can happen at all, to be a form of design defect, myself.
Ok, found some more info. Executive Software, makers of the defrag util bundled by MS with their more recent NT-based OSes, themselves claim that both W2K and XP are still affected by the issue. (here)
(bold emphasis mine)Fragmentation is a major factor in slow boot times. Many cases are on record of machines taking twenty or thirty minutes to reboot that previously took only a minute or two. This situation can deteriorate to the point where a machine will take hours or not boot up at all. Once thought to affect only Windows 9X and NT, this is also seen on fragmented Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems.
According to Microsoft?s Knowledge Base Q228734, ?This issue can occur when the NTFS bootsector code contained in logical sector zero of an NTFS volume is unable to locate and load NTLDR into memory due to the Master File Table (MFT) being highly fragmented.?
Why does this occur? The NTFS bootsector code locates and loads NTLDR into memory. This involves reading the volume's MFT to obtain the root directory. When the MFT is highly fragmented, pieces of the MFT and other metadata that must be read in order to locate the NTLDR may fall outside the areas of the disk that can be read by the BIOS INT 13 routine. Thus the system fails to boot up.
Further Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles outline additional manifestations of similar problems created by fragmentation. Microsoft KB article Q155892 covers the fact that the allocation for NTLDR?s $DATA attribute has become so fragmented that the whole $DATA attribute is no longer in the base FRS (file record segment). Microsoft KB article Q176968 explains another manifestation ? that when you attempt to boot with an NTFS system partition, the computer may hang after the power-on self-test (POST) and you may receive an error message stating that a kernel file is missing. This can occur if the NTFS disk structure data contained in the MFT is fragmented (as described above), actually preventing boot up.
Previously it was thought that this reliability problem had been eradicated in Windows 2000 and XP.
Exactly. So NTFS is no better in that regard.Originally posted by: Nothinman
The same non-guarantees are made with FAT.Also, if NTFS suffers from a failure, MS recommends restoring from a backup, because they can't guarantee the integrity of user data stored in files after an "improper shutdown event".
What good is an only half-supported filesystem? (read-only access) That isn't very useful for much, is it?Originally posted by: Nothinman
That I would agree with if it weren't for the fact that just about every OS can read NTFS just fine, it's the writing part that's tricky. So it's pretty simple to migrate from NTFS, it's just not possible to use it full time with a non-MS OS.
Meaning, NTFS is proprietary to MS, and incompatible with every other OS, other than NT.
Here's another interesting look at NTFS fragmentation, although a bit dated.
Hopefully my efforts will pay off and MS will fix the brain-dead cluster allocation routines in NTFS. Time will tell. If you agree with me and think MS needs to fix NTFS, please write them. Send some mail to some trade publications (PCWeek, INFOWORLD, NT Magazine, etc) and let them know about the fragmentation problem. Do whatever you can. NT is a great OS, but it does have its problems.
Edit: Even more here :
Defrag Manager Advanced Mode is an of?ine defragmentation environment designed to address special disk conditions, including:...
* Windows NT 4.0 and 2000 computers with excessive Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation, including systems rendered unbootable by this condition