What are Excluded Files?

PerfectDisk treats any space that cannot be accessed as excluded. The reason a file is excluded are listed below:

§          MetadataMetadata is "data about data." It is the file system overhead, so to speak, that is used to keep track of everything about all of the files on the drive. Metadata tells what allocation units make up the data for a given file, what allocation units are free, what allocation units contain bad sectors, and so on. The "contents" of a file, on the other hand, is termed "user data." NTFS protects its metadata through the use of a transaction log. User data is not so protected. File - Operating system files including the MFTMaster File Table (MFT). The NTFS file system contains a file called the master file table, or MFT. There is at least one entry in the MFT for every file on an NTFS drive, including the MFT itself. All information about a file, including its size, time and date stamps, permissions, and data content, is stored either in MFT entries, or in space outside the MFT that is described by MFT entries..

§          Access Denied - The file is opened for exclusive access by another process, such as the Pagefile or Hibernate file.

§          Excluded - The file has been manually excluded by the user. This is accomplished by excluding a file/folder in the Excluded Files node of the Drive Properties window.

§          Boot - Boot files are excluded if on the Excluded Files and Folders node of the Drive Preferences screen, you have selected boot files to be excluded.

On Windows 7, XP and Vista, Microsoft has introduced automatic defragmentation and optimization of certain files to speed up the boot process. These files are listed in the layout.ini file (\\Windows\Prefetch\layout.ini). The operating system attempts to defragment these files every 3 days if your computer is idle. This process does not clear any free space to consolidate these files, so Raxco Software recommends you to let PerfectDisk place these files in the optimal location.

On Windows 2003, boot files are the files needed to start up your computer, since the layout.ini file does not exist. This would include all your system drivers, ntldr, boot.ini, NTdetect.com, your *.nls files, etc.

Important: PerfectDisk lists only the system excluded files in the System Excluded Files section of the Statistics tab. The user excluded files are not listed in the Statistics tab. You can view them only in the Excluded Files and Folders node of the Drive Preferences window.

Related Topics

§          Boot Time (Offline) Defragmentation

§          Statistics Tab - System Excluded Files

§          Drive Preferences - Excluded Files and Folders