The Master Boot Record is located at the physical beginning of a hard disk, editable using the Disk Editor. It consists of a master bootstrap loader code (446 bytes) and four subsequent, identically structured partition records. Finally, the hexadecimal signature 55AA completes a valid Master Boot Record.
Offset Size Description
0 8 bit A value of 80 designates an active partition.
1 8 bit Partition start head
2 8 bit Partition start sector (bits 0-5)
3 8 bit Partition start track (bits 8,9 in bits 6,7 of sector)
4 8 bit Operating system indicator
5 8 bit Partition end head
6 8 bit Partition end sector (bits 0-5)
7 8 bit Partition end track (bits 8,9 in bits 6,7 of sector)
8 32 bit Sectors preceding partition
C 32 bit Length of partition in sectors
Operating system indicators: (hexadecimal, incomplete list)
00 Empty partition-table entry
01 DOS FAT12
04 DOS FAT16 (up to 32 MB)
05 DOS 3.3+ extended partition
06 DOS 3.31+ FAT16 (over 32 MB)
07 OS/2 HPFS, Windows NT NTFS, Advanced Unix
08 OS/2 v1.0-1.3, AIX bootable partition, SplitDrive
09 AIX data partition
0A OS/2 Boot Manager
0B Windows 95+ FAT32
0C Windows 95+ FAT32 (using LBA-mode INT 13 extensions)
0E DOS FAT16 (over 32 MB, using INT 13 extensions)
0F Extended partition (using INT 13 extensions)
17 Hidden NTFS partition
1B Hidden Windows 95 FAT32 partition
1C Hidden Windows 95 FAT32 partition (using LBA-mode INT 13 extensions)
1E Hidden LBA VFAT partition
42 Dynamic disk volume
50 OnTrack Disk Manager, read-only partition
51 OnTrack Disk Manager, read/write partition
81 Linux
82 Linux Swap partition, Solaris (Unix)
83 Linux native file system (ext2fs/xiafs)
85 Linux EXT
86 FAT16 volume/stripe set (Windows NT)
87 HPFS fault-tolerant mirrored partition, NTFS volume/stripe set
BE Solaris boot partition
C0 DR-DOS/Novell DOS secured partition
C6 Corrupted FAT16 volume/stripe set (Windows NT)
C7 Corrupted NTFS volume/stripe set
F2 DOS 3.3+ secondary partition
FAT12/16
Logical sector =0 Logical sector=1
(Floppy disk=1~9) Logical sector=1+sectors_per_FAT
(Floppydisk=10~18) Logical sector=1+sectors_per_FAT*2
(Floppy disk=19~32) Logical sector=1+sectors_per_FAT*2+sectors_of_rootdirectories
(Floppy disk=33~)
DOS Boot Sector FAT1 FAT2 ROOT Directory Data area(where files and subdirectories are stored)
FAT32
Usually 32 sectors Logical sector =0032h Logical sector =0032h+ 2*sectors_per_FAT
DOS Boot Recore 3 Sectors Reserved sectors Copy of record Reserve sectors FAT1 FAT2 Data area(where files and all bdirectories are stored)