Monday, February 6, 2017

Why are some files not movable on Windows 10?


I'm trying to shrink my partition. In order to achieve the amount that I need, I'm using JKdefrag. I've seen that some files are marked red - not movable, like hibernation.sys and pagefile.sys.


In the end, they are just files, and I'm an administrator. The only thing I can do remove them by disabling.


Why are they not movable?



Note: I'm not asking how to disable the hibernation.sys, pagefile.sys, etc. file. I'm looking for the reason why they are not movable. The answers in probable duped question don't contain the reason.



Answer



Some system files cannot be moved after the system boots, such as the page-file
and registry database files. They are exclusively locked by Windows itself, so cannot
be moved or directly updated while Windows is running.


For example, while Windows is running the page-file is referred-to by its direct
cluster number on the disk.
Since swap is a critical operation affecting system performance, Windows does not have
the time to search the disk and folder metadata when it wants to do or undo a swap.


Another reason for making these files unmovable is that they are critical to the
operation of Windows, so Windows protects them to the limit and does not allow
any access that does not go through its dedicated utilities or API.


Any product that is capable of moving these files will require a reboot in order
to get access to the disk before Windows is launched.


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