2.7 Compound File User-Defined Data Sectors

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Stream sectors are simply collections of arbitrary bytes. They are the building blocks of user-defined data streams, and no restrictions are imposed on their contents. User-defined data sectors are represented as chains in the FAT or mini FAT, and each chain MUST have a single directory entry associated with it to hold its stream object metadata, such as its name and size.

Example of a user-defined data sector chain

Figure 15: Example of a user-defined data sector chain

In the preceding example with sector #0 through sector #8 shown, a user-defined data sector chain starts at sector #7, continues to sector #1, continues to sector #3, and ends with sector #5. The next sector location for sector #5 points to ENDOFCHAIN (0xFFFFFFFE).

To hold all of the user-defined data, the length of the user-defined data sector chain MUST be greater than or equal to the stream size that is specified in the stream object's directory entry. The unused portion of the last sector of a stream object's user-defined data SHOULD be filled with zeroes to avoid leaking unintended information.