RE: The disk is formatted with FAT32 which from my understanding would normally have alternating pages/sectors of 00 and FF not all 00, is this correct? A format actually does not write anything to the data area of the disk. (with maybe the exception of the previous FAT backup file which allows you to undo a format, but that may also be in the FAT area. Could someone clarify?). FAT pretty much runs on the first come first serve system, writing data at the edge of the disk in. If the disk was newly wiped or didn't ever have that much data on it in the first place, the end of the disk would remain zeros. As for the end of the disk, some OS's and utilities will write files that are not often used or modified out toward the end of the disk (and frequently used, but not often modified, files are written at the beginning of the disk). This optimization improves performance and reduces fragmentation. I do believe Windows' disk defrag utility does this. Hope this helps. Jason Upchurch Churchat_private ----------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service. For more information on this free incident handling, management and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com
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