CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsntfsntfs-mft
Uthman
Uthman

Reputation: 9807

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?

I, actually want to view the $BITMAP to know the locations of all the files and directories in a partition.

Update: Seems like I can only view the MFT file using HexEditor. Still searching for more options though...

Upvotes: 1

Views: 18386

Answers (5)

RITWIK SINGH
RITWIK SINGH

Reputation: 1

$MFT is a system generated file which can't be directly accessed by the user despite administrative privileges. If you wish to view the MFT you can use free tools like FTK imager or Autopsy to export the $MFT from the root directory of any partition having NTFS file system. Furthermore parsing that MFT using analyzeMFT package from github can give a exel file to easily read it.

Upvotes: 0

WarriorPrince
WarriorPrince

Reputation: 157

If your intention is to list files from a drive and view the path of them then check the source files here a link. This guy parses the MFT and searches for a file present inside it or not. Just modify the code can help you get the path of files and directories.

Upvotes: 0

Stas
Stas

Reputation: 1

I don't exactly know where it is but you can try next path \\.\C:, as I understood it is it. You can have a look on this program that shows how to get deleted files.

Upvotes: -2

akarnokd
akarnokd

Reputation: 69997

Accessing a disk's cluster BITMAP can be read via the FSCTL_GET_VOLUME_BITMAP API call. However, it won't tell what files are at each cluster. You need either parse the MFT (faster) or recursively call FSCTL_GET_RETRIEVAL_POINTERS on each file (slow).

Upvotes: 4

Pavel Radzivilovsky
Pavel Radzivilovsky

Reputation: 19104

MFT is not a file. MFT is a part of the file system. To view it, you will have to access disk on lower level, such as block mode.

Upvotes: -6

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