Data Storage - Boot sector (Sector 1)

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About

The boot sector, located at sector 1 of each volume, is a critical disk structure for starting your computer. It contains executable code and data required by the code, including information that the file system uses to access the volume.

Windows Disk

The boot sector is created when you format a volume.

At the end of the boot sector is a two-byte structure called a signature word or end of sector marker, which is always set to 0x55AA.

On computers running Windows 2000, the boot sector on the active partition loads into memory and starts Ntldr (NT Loader), which loads the operating system.

The Windows 2000 boot sector consists of the following elements:

  • An x 86-based CPU jump instruction.
  • The original equipment manufacturer identification (OEM ID).
  • The BIOS parameter block (BPB) , a data structure.
  • The extended BPB .
  • The executable boot code (or bootstrap code) that starts the operating system.





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