The Master Boot Record (MBR) is a small but essential section of a hard drive that is responsible for booting up an operating system. It is located at the very beginning of the hard drive and contains information about the partition table and boot loader.
The MBR consists of three parts:
Boot loader code
The boot loader code is the first piece of code that is executed when the computer boots up, and it is responsible for finding and loading the operating system.
Disk signature
Disk signature is a unique identifier that is used to differentiate between different hard drives.
Partition table
Partition table contains information about the layout of the hard drive, including the size and location of each partition.
When a computer boots up, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) reads the MBR from the hard drive and loads the boot loader code into memory. The boot loader code then searches for the active partition and loads the operating system from that partition into memory.
The MBR is a critical component of the boot process, and any corruption or damage to the MBR can result in the inability to boot the computer. In such cases, tools like boot-repair disks or specialized software can be used to repair or replace the MBR.
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