2. Tables Legend
2.1. Overview
The tables in this documentation aren''t completely consistent. Below is a key to the tables showing how various fields are represented?

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

2.3. Size Fields
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).
Table 1.1. Size fields table legend

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.

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

Table 1.2. An example for an index table

Offset	Size	Description
0x00	2	Offset to data
0x02	2	Size of data
0x04	4	Key	SID
0x08	4	Data	Owner Id
0x0C	4	Data	Hash

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

Table 1.3. NTFS volume versions for each OS

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   consistent use of padding/alignment fields

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Tags: windows,NTFS,xp,ntfs