How FAT and NFTS differ
How do FAT file systems and NTFS file systems differ from one another, and what are the implications, if any, in regards to data recovery?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    By submitting your registration information to SearchWindowsServer.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchWindowsServer.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

NTFS was designed to address many issues that surfaced with FAT; a number of which affect how evidence can be recovered from a hard disk drive in a forensic environment. For one, the MFT, or Master File Table (the NTFS version of FAT's File Allocation Table), typically exists in two copies on every NTFS volume, under the reserved filename $MftMirr. The duplicate MFT contains the first four records of the original MFT, in the event the original becomes damaged.

Another NTFS element that may have forensic implications is the presence of alternate data streams (ADS). ADS allows a file to be associated with more than one data batches on the disk (though the data in a file's ADS will be lost if it's moved to a non-NTFS volume). ADSes cannot be detected by a simple DIR command; they have to be revealed using specialized software.

To learn more about the potentially forensic implications, check out Microsoft's description of how NTFS works.

This was first published in May 2007

Join the conversationComment

Share
Comments

    Results

    Contribute to the conversation

    All fields are required. Comments will appear at the bottom of the article.
    Back to top