Beginning with Windows NT Microsoft started to use the NTFS file system. This remains their premier directory structure. It allows for fast access for storing and retrieving of files on internal personal computer hard disk drives as well as digital storage media connected to a PC. Very often when connecting a compact flash drive to a PC you are given a prompt from the Windows operating system suggesting you need to reformat that drive. A problem arises in that most USB flash drives are formatted in the different and older Microsoft file allocation tables method. Reformatting in the newer NTFS not only deletes all of the information on that drive but makes NTFS data recovery extremely difficult.

NTFS recovery requires software built expressly for that purpose. An explanation of this is fairly straightforward. If a pie in this case the pie representing your computer’s hard disk is divided into 1000 segments with markers and each division you need only travel to each of those markers from 1 to 999 in order to reach a given point. But if an older system only used 300 divisions and 300 markers how would a command decision to go to number 545 be of assistance. It would not. This is why data recovery for particular operating systems and file systems must be specialized.