Help - Table

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Overview

The tables in this documentation aren't completely consistant. Below is a key to the tables showing how various fields are represented.

Any table fields that have footnote marks, e.g. (a), (e), will have a fuller description immediately below the table.

In NTFS not all fields are of a fixed size. Some depend on the value of another field, some depend on the contents of the field.

All the numbers in size fields are in decimal format. e.g. 12 (twelve), 42 (forty-two).

Key	Name	Description
12	Fixed	This field is twelve bytes long. Its size is constant.
P8	Padding	P8 means pad the field to an 8 byte boundary. The size of this field could be 0 - 7 bytes. P4 means 4 byte alignment, etc (a)
V	Variable	The length of this field depends on its contents. An example is a SID. To know its length, you must decode the structure.
S	X-Ref	A cross-reference shows that the size is defined elsewhere in the table. The size can be represented by any letter, except P or V.

(a) Any padding of a fixed size will be displayed as a fixed size.

Where a table represents an index, the key and data will be shown as below:

Note that the fields are not all used in exactly the same way. NT indicates old fields whereas 2K and XP indicate new fields.

OS	NTFS	Description
blank	all	Used by all versions of Windows
NT	1.2	Only used in Windows NT
2K	3.0	Windows 2000 and later
XP	3.1	New to Windows XP

    repeating groups?
    link padding8, padding and other table features to help/tables
    consistant use of padding/alignment fields