File Tables in ReFS

I recently discovered what could be considered a file table in ReFS. When searching for the file table I found a number of instances of the file table that looked very similar, but had minor differences and some of which were missing a few files in them. I was able to see in EnCase 7 that only one of these tables was actually in allocated space, the rest being in unallocated space. At first I wasn't sure why there would be multiple file tables that essentially showed the same files. After additional analysis I was able to see that the most recent file table, the one in allocated space, was the file table that had all the current files listed with the most up-to-date metadata. It seems that the beginning of each table has MACE times associated with them. The created time for each of the tables is the same which could indicated that the file was copied and then modified by the system to reflect new files being created or other changes. So far I have been able to determine that the file table includes the file name, MACE times, size of the file in bytes, and a pointer to the physical cluster location of the file.

The images below show an example of the MACE times from an entry in the unallocated space and updated table in allocated space. Both show the created time as being 1/30/14 4:28:44 UTC, but the unallocated space modified and accessed times show 1/30/14 4:46:19 UTC, while the allocated space times show 1/30/14 5:12:06 UTC. The changes to the file table could be used in a forensic investigation to show data that was once on the drive.

MACE times in unallocated space file table

MACE times in allocated space file table

The image below shows an example of a file table entry. The orange highlights the name of the file, Paragraph.txt. The blue highlights the MACE times for the file which are in Windows 64-bit Little Endian. The red highlights the file size in bytes. In this case the hex 80 04, stored in Little Endian, converts to 1,152 bytes. The green highlights the hex, also in Little Endian, that points to the starting cluster of the file. In this case 70 03 converts to cluster 880.

File Table Entry Example