New Technology File System (NTFS)


Windows NT and newer versions offer two choices for file system, the same old FAT-based system used since time began, as enhanced for Window 95, and its own Windows NT File System, usually termed NTFS. The file system used by NT bears a strong resemblance to the OS/2 HPFS-after all, the two operating systems share common origins-but uses its own terminology and refines the structure somewhat.

The centerpiece of the NTFS is the Master File Table, which stores all of the data describing each directory and file on a given disk. The basic data about each file is contained in a file record in the Master File Table. These file records may be two, four, or eight sectors long (that is, 1K, 2K or 4K). The first 16 records are reserved for system use to hold data of special metadata files, the first of which stores the attributes of the Master File Table itself.

To NTFS, a file is a collection of attributes, each of which describes some aspect of the file. One of the attributes is the name of the file, another is the data contained in the file. Others may include who worked on the file and when it was last modified. The Master File Table tracks these attributes. To identify attributes, the file system assigns each file a unique ID number, a 48-bit value (allowing nearly 300 trillion entries).

The Master File Table attempts to store all the attributes of a file in the record it associates with that file. When the attributes of a file grow too large to be held in the MFT record, the NTFS just spreads the attribute data across as many additional disk cluster records to create as many non-resident attributes as are needed to hold the file. The Master File Table keeps track of all the records containing the attributes associated with a given file by the file's ID number.

This system allows any file to grow as large as the complete storage space available while preserving a small allocation unit size. No matter how large a disk or partition, NTFS never allocates space in increments larger than 4K.

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This article was sent to us by: Ralph Kitzper at 06012010

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