This article takes the reader through the process of carving files from a hard drive. We explore the various partition types and how to determine these (even on formatted disks), learn what the starting sector of each partition is and also work through identifying the length the sector for each partition. In this, we cover the last two bytes of the MBR and why they are important to the forensic analyst. This process is one that will help the budding analyst or tester in gaining an understanding of drive partitions and hence how they can recover and carve these from a damaged or formatted drive.