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Questions tagged [ntfs-mft]

Master File Table (MFT) is an integral component of the NTFS file system. The MFT contains metadata about every file, directory, and metafile on an NTFS volume. It includes filenames, locations, size, and permissions.

The Master File Table (MFT) contains metadata about every file, directory, and metafile on an volume. It includes filenames, locations, size, and permissions. Its structure supports algorithms which minimize disk fragmentation. A directory entry consists of a filename and a "file ID", which is the record number representing the file in the Master File Table. The file ID also contains a reuse count to detect stale references.

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NTFS - file record size

I was wondering about the actual (disk-)size of each MFT record. Since the number of clusters per MFT record is set in the bootsector, i guess each one has the same size. However, each record header stores an additional value: its Allocated size (at…
Lukas
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Reading MFT in NTFS

While wandering the web looking for explanations of how to read/write MFT I found the folowing section:(http://www.installsetupconfig.com/win32programming/1996%20AppE_apnilife.pdf) If NtfsProtectSystemFiles is set to FALSE, then the special files…
choppy
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How to dump the NTFS $Bitmap file

For a project, I want to get the list of all free/used clusters on an NTFS partition. For this i have to dump the $Bitmap file and parse its contents. There are few API's and examples on the web, but however they don't seem to work. Is there a…
Vikram
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How to get file MFT entry/inode using Java or C++

I've written a duplicate finder in Java, but I need to include hard link support for it. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to dig out a file's MFT entry in Java. Although there is a method called fileKey() in the BasicFileAttributeView class,…
user1079475
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Named pipe IPC between elevated and non elevated C# processes

Context: I wrote a non-elevated WinForms app, from which I want to allow the user to query the file system using NTFS' MFT (Master File Table) because it's so damn fast! However, starting with Windows 8 or 10 or 1809 or something or other, querying…
Craig Silver
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What's the maximum number of datarun bytes in an MFT record?

As the number of fragments in a file increases, you can watch the number of bytes used in the MFT record grow. As expected, it grows in increments of 8 until it fills every last byte of the 1024 byte base record, before splitting into a second…
David Wohlferd
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Last index entry in between index record but explorer still able to show all files

I'm writing a parser for NTFS file system. I have a question regarding the INDX record. I have gone through the stackoverflow question "Invalid INDX entries for $I30 on NTFS harddisk" and also the links provided in it. Please refer to image…
balajir712
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Enumerating the NTFS MFT: FSCTL_ENUM_USN_DATA and USN_RECORD_V3 support

I'm using FSCTL_ENUM_USN_DATA to enumerate over the NTFS MFT so that I may build a directory database based on USN_RECORD FileReferenceNumbers. I'm constructing this database so that I can monitor file changes on an NTFS drive by using the NTFS USN…
rawberry
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Location of MFT file?

I have a partition, formatted as NTFS. I have studied that devices formatted as NTFS have a MFT (Master File Table) which contains a lot of information about the contents of a devices. Is MFT really a file? Where is it located? How can I view it? …
Uthman
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MFT information for alternate data stream names

I have been working on retrieving file information from MFT. I see that the MFT record has info regarding standard info, file names, data and few other attributes. I tried parsing the MFT record to get all the details that it contains. I am able to…
kishore
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VC++ - How to get permission to write on NTFS boot sector?

I searched a lot to get write - access to the boot sector (Master File Table ). I used CreateFile function with write access parameters like, GENERIC_WRITE. Then used SetFilePointer and WriteFile to write on a particular memory address. But what I…
Hemendra Sharma
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how indexing happens on a NTFS drive

how does the computer retrive a particular entry in the MFT table for a file or directory? I read through many documents which describe the structure of NTFS and MFT, but i fail to understand say i have a file in E:\documents\test.txt, how can i…
Anirudh Goel
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NTFS Stream Structure

I was reading up on the NTFS structure here, the major question I wanted to answer for myself was how are the blocks in fragmented streams strung together. The page explains that in the Master File Table files have information about their streams,…
Geordi
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What is this unknown NTFS field?

The Microsoft documentation for NTFS describes the structure of an attribute. It shows it as follows: typedef struct _ATTRIBUTE_RECORD_HEADER { ATTRIBUTE_TYPE_CODE TypeCode; ULONG RecordLength; UCHAR FormCode; …
Reinstate Monica
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MFT dead wood; and MFTs on removable media

I am new to the topic of the MFT in NTFS. I have read a number of documents about it but so far I haven't found explicit statements on some questions that immediately come to mind. If you have a Windows desktop and read files from a removable…
Kasey
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