UNIVERSITY OF THE PEOPLE

CS 2301 OPERATING SYSTEMS 1

PROGRAMMING ASSIGNMENT UNIT 7

ANASTASIOS TSOURNOS

Introduction
 In this exercise, we will explore the NTFSInfo utility tool. By the end of this exercise,
we should understand why the tool is important and the sort of information it provides. We’ll
start by running the tool and taking a screenshot of what pops up.

1. Attach YOUR screenshot from running NTFSInfo utility

2. List number of sectors and define what it means

There are 1,922,232,319 sectors.

A sector is the smallest partition of physical storage n a hard drive. Its size is roughly 512
bytes. So, my computer has a total of 1,922,232,319 sectors, each holding roughly 512 bytes
of data.

3. List number of total clusters and define what it means

The total number of clusters is 240,279,039. A cluster is a reserved space for data content that
can hold one or a series of sectors. Number of sectors is represented to a power of 2. The only
odd number a sector can have is 1, all the rest have to be a power of 2.

4. List number of bytes per cluster and define what it means

The NTFS cluster size is 4,096 bytes. A cluster can hold roughly 8 sectors with each sector
holding 512 bytes roughly. Hence, 512 times 8 = 4,096 bytes.

5. Translate the number of free clusters from decimal number to a hexadecimal

There is a total of 211,325,954 free clusters which using the table below translates to
C98940216.

Division by 16 Quotient Remainder Remainder

(in decimal) Hexadecimal

211325954/16 13207872 2 2
13207872/16 825,492 0 0
825492/16 51,593 4 4
51593/16 3,224 9 9
3224/16 201 8 8
210/16 12 9 9
12/16 0 12 C

Conclusion

The NTFSInfo is an invaluable utility tool that helps us put into context what seem to be just
numbers on screen. It gives us meaningful information about NTFS volumes. It gives details
of the allocation size, the cluster and sector sizes, as well as the location and drive space
allocated to the MFT-Zone in a drive.

References

(n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2021, from http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

Hard Disk Drive Basics. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2021, from http://www.ntfs.com/hard-
disk-basics.htm

Markruss. (n.d.). NTFSInfo - Windows Sysinternals. Retrieved May 24, 2021, from
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/ntfsinfo