Inside the Windows NT File System

This detailed, informative monograph by critically acclaimed author Helen Custer is an up-to-date adjunct to her bestselling Inside Windows NT. In this special edition, Custer expands on her discussion of the robust new Windows NT File System (NTFS) and documents its arduous design and creation process.

NTFS sets a new standard for reliability and speed in PC, workstation, and server file systems. This book includes the first discussion of data compression in Windows NT, describes the file system's internal structure, and explains in detail how NTFS recovers a volume and reconstructs itself after a system failure. Along with clear explanations of how NTFS works, Custer provides detailed information and insights into

• The NTFS design
• Use of the layered driver, relational database, transaction-processing, and object models
• File system recoverability
• Fault-tolerant disk volumes

Inside the Windows NT File System is a must read for anyone installing or developing for Microsoft's advanced olperating system for workstations and servers.

1. Why Create Another File System?
1. High-End File System Requirements
1. Recoverability
2. Security
3. Data Redundancy and Fault-Tolerance
4. Large Disks and Large Files
2. New Features in NTFS
1. Multiple Data Streams
2. Unicode-Based Names
3. General Indexing Facility
4. Bad-Cluster Remapping
5. POISX Support
6. Removable Disks
2. The NTFS Model
1. The Layered Driver Model
2. Relational Database and Transaction-Processing Models
3. The Object Model
3. File System Structure
1. NTFS Concepts and Terms
2. On-Disk Structure
3. File Naming Indexing
4. NTFS Metadata Files and the Boot File
4. Recoverability
1. Evolution of File System Design
1. Careful Write File Systems
2. Lazy Write File Systems
3. Recoverable File Systems
2. Logging
1. Log File Service (LFS)
2. Log File
1. Update Records
2. Checkpoint Records
3. Recovery
1. Analysis Pass
2. Redo Pass
3. Undo Pass
5. Volume Management and Fault Tolerance
1. Volume Management Features
1. Volume Sets
2. Stripe Sets
2. Fault Tolerance Volumes
1. Mirror Sets
2. Duplex Sets
3. Stripe Sets with Parity
4. Sector Sparing
3. NTFS Bad-Cluster Recovery
6. Data Compression
1. Compressing a Sparse File
2. Compressing Nonsparse Data
7. MS-DOS File Name Generation

A very high-level overview of NTFS, without sufficient detail to be able to reverse-engineer it… Why bother?

You may safely skip it, if you're not into filesystems.