Master File Table Size

Windows reserves 12.5% of its NTFS file system for the master file table. Greater space will only be allocated to the MFT if the rest of the volume becomes full. See this Microsoft posting for confirmation on this point. As noted before on this site, the MFT stores information about every file used on operating system. After files are deleted, they will still be referenced in the MFT.

Individual entries in a MFT are between 1 KB and 4 KB each. If the total size of a file is less than record in the MFT, all of the data will be stored in the MFT. The MFT may contain pointers to attributes for files that reside outside the MFT for files which are very large in size.

The first 16 records in the MFT contain the meta data for the volume, or hard drive. The meta data will include the $logfile which records operating system events; the name of the volume and its creation time; and a cluster map, $bitmap, that indicates which clusters are currently active.