Optimize NTFS File System

NTFS is a great file system... no doubt... but its feature-set comes at a slight cost in performance... you can negate this a little as follows...

By default NTFS will automatically update timestamps whenever a directory is traversed... this isn't a necessary feature, and it slows down large volumes...

in order to disable it, Open Start menu -> Run -> regedit and navigate to the following key location in registry...

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
  

and set the value named NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate to 1.

If you can't locate it then create a new REG_DWORD type value and rename it as NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate and then set its value to 1 by double clicking it.

NTFS uses disparate master file control tables to store file system information about your drives... over time these core MFT files grow and become fragmented, slowing down all accesses to the drive... by setting aside a little space, MFT's can grow without becoming fragmented... in the same key where you disabled the last access feature create a new REG_DWORD value called NtfsMftZoneReservation and set its value to 2.

Please keep it in mind that this tweak will not work for FAT32 file system...