Monday, April 30, 2007

MBR-Master Boot Record


A Master Boot Record (MBR), or partition sector, is the 512-byte boot sector that is the first sector ("Sector 0") of a partitioned data storage device such as a hard disk. (The boot sector of a non-partitioned device is a Volume Boot Record.) It is sometimes used for bootstrapping operating systems, containing a machine code program; sometimes used for holding part of a disk's partition table1; and sometimes used for uniquely identifying individual disk media, with a 32-bit data signature; although on some machines it is entirely unused or redundant.[1][2][3][4]

Due to the broad popularity of IBM PC-compatible computers, this type of MBR is widely used, to the extent of being supported by, and incorporated into, other computer types, including newer cross-platform standards for bootstrapping and partitioning.

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