Computer forensics deals with collecting the evidence of a good information system in the form of hardware or software and can be used as legal evidence in court.
Slack space or sometimes referred to as file slack is the area between the end of a file and end of the last cluster or sector used by the file in question. Area is an area that will not be used again to store the information there, so the area is "wasted" useless. Slack space is common in file systems that use a large cluster size, while the file system that uses a small cluster size can organize the storage media more effectively and efficiently. Amount of wasted disk space can be thought is estimated by multiplying the number of files (including the number of directories) with half the size of a cluster.
Unallocated space, or in the other word "free space", is logical space on a hard drive that can be used by the system to put files on. Unallocated space is the opposite of "allocated" space, which means a place on the hard drive where there's already files written or stored in it. Unallocated space is different from Slack space. The difference, in the unallocated space the system can put files in it, where in the slack space the system can't put any files in it. Simple right? :)
Here's an example. If we put a file into certain space on the hard drive, that part of the hard drive is now in allocated status because the file is using its space. When a space is in allocated status, no other files can be written to that space. If the file we stored is deleted then that space of the hard drive is now in the unallocated status. This means that we can put some files in it.
Generally, files can only be stored in the unallocated space. New storage device is have all its space unallocated virtually, why? because small portion of the space will be taken by the system files to do its work. Like when in windows there will always be a "recycler" hidden folder to store a data about deleted files, or in linux called ".Thrash".
Example case. A newly formatted 100 GB flashdisk have 100% unallocated space (actually its 99.9% because of the filesystem). If a 1 GB file is stored on the disk then there will be 1%(1GB) allocated space and 99% unallocated space(99GB). If a 9 GB movies is stored to the disk, then there will be a total of 10%(10GB) of allocated space and 90%(90GB) of unallocated space. So, the movies will only be stored into the remaining unallocated space, not overwritting the previous one.
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SinggihTKJ