more idle thoughts - about file metadata

Posted by jimspoon
Jan 27, 2014 at 07:09 PM

in another thread, the topic of attaching custom fields to files has come up again.

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5280/0/wincatalog

It would be very useful to have this capability, particularly if it is implemented in a standard way, generally accessible from other computer programs.

It would seem that Windows Alternate Data Streams would offer the ability to attach data fields to files. But it seems like the capability is not widely used. And the continuing availability of ADS might be in doubt.

I would like to find a good utility that makes it easy to find files with alternate data streams, and to view the content of those streams.

For finding ADS streams, a good utility is Nirsoft AlternateStreamView:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/alternate_data_streams.html

So far I have not found an easy way to view the CONTENT of ADS streams.

But today I did find a good article about ADS. It does describe how to use Powershell to view the contents of streams, and also to create and delete them.

https://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2013/03/24/alternate-data-streams-in-ntfs.aspx

And here is a little tutorial about ADS I found useful -

http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/altds

It shows how even executables can be put into the alternate data stream of a file.