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Learn Computer Forensics

You're reading from   Learn Computer Forensics A beginner's guide to searching, analyzing, and securing digital evidence

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Product type Paperback
Published in Apr 2020
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781838648176
Length 368 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Concepts
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Author (1):
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William Oettinger William Oettinger
Author Profile Icon William Oettinger
William Oettinger
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Table of Contents (17) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Section 1: Acquiring Evidence
2. Chapter 1: Types of Computer-Based Investigations FREE CHAPTER 3. Chapter 2: The Forensic Analysis Process 4. Chapter 3: Acquisition of Evidence 5. Chapter 4: Computer Systems 6. Section 2: Investigation
7. Chapter 5: Computer Investigation Process 8. Chapter 6: Windows Artifact Analysis 9. Chapter 7: RAM Memory Forensic Analysis 10. Chapter 8: Email Forensics – Investigation Techniques 11. Chapter 9: Internet Artifacts 12. Section 3: Reporting
13. Chapter 10: Report Writing 14. Chapter 11: Expert Witness Ethics 15. Assessments 16. Other Books You May Enjoy

Understanding filesystems

A hard drive can have multiple partitions on it, and, in each partition, there will be (in most cases) a filesystem. There might be hundreds of thousands to millions of files contained within a partition. The filesystem tracks where every file is and how much space is available within the partition boundaries.  

We discussed sectors earlier in the Hard drives section, and they are the smallest units that are available to store data. The filesystem stores data based on clusters. Clusters are one or more sectors. A cluster is the smallest allocation unit the filesystem can write to. Now, there are many filesystems available, and some are restricted to specific operating systems unless the user enables drivers that will allow the operating system to read the filesystem. 

We will now look at some of the common filesystems you may encounter.

The FAT filesystem

The File Allocation Table (FAT) filesystem has been around since the early days...

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