AH HA! I figured it out
Here's the scoop as to why my 250 GB dedicated C: drive was reserving ~1/5 of the total drive size for the MFT.
Quote:
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As more files and directories are added to the file system, it becomes necessary for NTFS to add more records to the MFT. Since keeping the MFT contiguous on the disk improves performance, when an NTFS volume is first set up, the operating system reserves about 12.5% of the disk space immediately following the MFT; this is sometimes called the "MFT Zone". This is a substantial chunk of real estate to reserve, but bear in mind that it is still usable. Regular files and directories will not use this space until and unless the rest of the disk volume space is consumed, but if that occurs, the "MFT Zone" will be used.
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Master File Table (MFT) AND
I figured out how to defeat this legacy space hog on my Seagate 250GB C: drive. So the MFT Reserved Zone (pink area in screens below)
went from this (pink area ~31.25 GB)...
to this (pink area ~3.75 GB)
Can I get a Boohay?! Here's how I did it.
1. Used Acronis to resize my C: partition from the full 250 GB drive to just 30 GB.
2. Defragged using JK Defrag
3. Using Acronis again resized the C: partition back to the full size of the drive.
Da da da DAAAA!