Looking At File Systems

Most mainstream operating systems today use a file system in order to store and a range data and free space on hard drives or external storage devices. The file system enables your computer to write and read data on these storage media.

Many advanced users use additional partitions, which are areas of free disk space that can be accessed by the file system and are typically shown in your Windows XP Explorer as actual drives such as those labeled C: and D:. So although these partitions up here as separate drives, they are actually on the same hard drive module.

File System Types

The Microsoft Windows operating systems popular on most computers today use two main file systems. The first and most common, is known as NTFS, or the new technology file system. This file system was created for Windows NT and was adopted on Windows XP computers. The second most common is known as FAT 32. It is a 32-bit version of the FAT file system which is also known as file allocation table.

NTFS is a far more advanced file system as it provides a much more secure and efficient way to store data. This system allows you to individually assigned security to specific files. It also enables you to back up and restore in cases where you need a hard drive recovery.

What is common to both fact and NTFS file systems is the master boot record and partition table, which is stored in the first sector on the hard disk. This master boot record and partition table is critical to your hard drive's operation as it determines which partitions on the disk can be booted from. This allows the operating system to control that partition, and enables your computer to start up.

Of course, the master boot record and partition table are incredibly critical to the operation of your computer. If either of these are damaged, your drive becomes unbootable, and may appear to be completely blank despite the fact that it still holds lots of data.

(Continued with NTFS Partition Recovery)

Tutorial Contents
Recovery Tutorial - The introduction
XP Partition Recovery - A case study
File Systems - How important they are to your OS
NTFS Partition Recovery - Some key advantages
Retrieving Files - Moving forward with your recovery.
Copying Your Hard Drive - Safety first, always.
Partition Recovered - A case study concluded.

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