Locating $mft

I'm trying to locate some files including $mft.
Can anyone tell me how to locate $mft

logicearth said:

And how are you going about locating these files?

that's basically the question

I've searched at the command prompt
dir /a
as I thought these meta files were accessible from the root.

Also used "(Search) Everything"

Physically I thought the Master File table followed the Boot sector of the volume.

logicearth said:

You will not see these files though explorer or the command line, you have to go deeper into the kernel of Windows. Talk directly with the file system driver. I know of no program that would do that.

The program Directory Snoop (not free) allows the user to view the content of metafiles like $mft and others. Quite useful as it also can recover deleted files and wipe files where necessary.

The closest I've found is ntfsinfo tool from sysinternals. This is the kind of report it generates.



Download link here:

NTFSInfo

mjf said:

I'm trying to locate some files including $mft.
Can anyone tell me how to locate $mft

If you mean the physical location on the disk then some defraggers might do this - PerfectDisk will for instance.