Creating an SFM volume on large partition causes a Stop 0x24

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This problem will generally only occur on a partition with 100,000 or more files that take up 7 to 8 GB or more disk space. When a SFM volume is created, the service will start indexing the partition. The indexing routines create memory structures that consume a large amount of non- paged pool memory and if your volume is large enough and has enough files, you will run out of non-paged pool and the system will stop responding. In most cases, this results in a STOP 0x24 in NTFS, although it can occur when another kernel-mode driver attempts to allocate resources that require non-paged pool memory.

The system may simply be slow and unresponsive for the first 20 to 40 minutes after creating the Macintosh volume. This is because of the large amount of kernel memory being used by SFM. If SFM is able to complete the indexing without running out of non-paged pool memory the memory will be freed and the system will return to normal. There should be no problems after this unless enough changes occur that a full re-indexing is necessary. In this case, SFM will have to repeat the procedure.

The simplest way to identify this problem is to run Performance Monitor after you create the SFM volume and watch the Memory\Pool Nonpaged Bytes counter. If a constant increase in non-paged pool bytes occurs over a 20 to 30 minute period of time, resulting in large amount (20 to 30 MB or more) of non-paged pool, you may be experiencing this problem.

For more information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: