Move data in a file without copying it?

NTFSD
1

Hi,

This may not be the correct forum for this question, but I’m asking it here since there is such a wealth of knowledge here.

Lets say I have a 1 TB data file on an NTFS volume consisting of 4, 256GB blocks of data - A, B, C, and D.
I want to delete block C from the file and then move the contents of block D up to where block C is and then truncate the file to 768GB.
The traditional method of doing this would be to read the data from block D and write it to the location where block C was, then call SetEndOfFile() to truncate the file.
This creates a lot of read/write I/O and in the case where you are using SSD/NVME counts against the TBW of the SSD.

Is there a way to logically move block D up to block C without actually reading/writing a bunch of data?
Something like updating file table entries/extents?
Preferably from user mode?

Thanks,
Erik

2

You might be able to do something if you lock the volume and know NTFS
structures.

In your case, I think an easier way, though not exactly what you want, is
to mark that area as SPARSE, set that region as ZERO, which will deallocate
the range, but it will not move the actual file pointers.
You would need to be aware of the sparse region and cut your file position
pointers accordingly when reading/writing beyond the C marker.

Kind regards, Dejan Maksimovic.
FS Lead: http://www.alfasp.com