A look at Windows file allocation systems

Windows data recovery can be divided into two sections. Those would be the older FAT file system and the new NTFS system. While very similar in that both of these directory systems allow access to stored files on both internal hard drives and external digital storage they are different in regards to formatting issues. Formatting issues refers to problems that result in file deletion due to accidental or planned reformatting of digital storage areas. This results in a need for NTFS recovery.

Every Windows operating system built since the year 2000 uses the NTFS file system. This is a different way of formatting directory structure than previously used in the FAT system. The difficulty arises in that many external digital media storage devices still use the older system and if one accidentally reformats a device in the new system it can result in a difficult NTFS data recovery situation. Basically reformatting in the newer system and FAT drive will create boot sector divisions in all of the wrong places.