This article is about an IBM PC-specific type of boot sector on partitioned media. For the first sector on non-partitioned media, see volume boot record.
A master boot record (MBR) is a special type of boot sector at the very beginning of partitioned computer mass storage devices like fixed disks or removable drives intended for use with IBM PC-compatible systems and beyond. The concept of MBRs was publicly introduced in 1983 with PC DOS 2.0.
The MBR holds the information on how the disc's sectors (aka "blocks") are divided into partitions, each partition notionally containing a file system. The MBR also contains executable code to function as a loader for the installed operating system—usually by passing control over to the loader's second stage, or in conjunction with each partition's volume boot record (VBR). This MBR code is usually referred to as a boot loader.
The organization of the partition table in the MBR limits the maximum addressable storage space of a partitioned disk to 2 TiB (232 × 512 bytes).[1] Approaches to slightly raise this limit utilizing 32-bit arithmetic or 4096-byte sectors are not officially supported, as they fatally break compatibility with existing boot loaders, most MBR-compliant operating systems and associated system tools, and may cause serious data corruption when used outside of narrowly controlled system environments. Therefore, the MBR-based partitioning scheme is in the process of being superseded by the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme in new computers. A GPT can coexist with an MBR in order to provide some limited form of backward compatibility for older systems.
MBRs are not present on non-partitioned media such as floppies, superfloppies or other storage devices configured to behave as such, nor are they necessarily present on drives used in non-PC platforms.
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A masterbootrecord (MBR) is a special type of boot sector at the very beginning of partitioned computer mass storage devices like fixed disks or removable...
A volume bootrecord (VBR) (also known as a volume boot sector, a partition bootrecord or a partition boot sector) is a type of boot sector introduced...
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(MasterBootRecord) refers to whether or not the boot loader can be stored in the first sector of a mass storage device. The column VBR (Volume Boot Record)...
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the case of the latter, the computer will not be able to boot, even into safe mode. Booting from another device and uncompressing the files will usually...
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code that is contained within the MasterBootRecord (MBR). Use of this partition is not the only way BIOS-based boot can be performed while using GPT-partitioned...
the libfdisk library and supports partitioning of disks that use Masterbootrecord, GUID Partition Table, BSD disklabel, SGI or SUN disk labels. It also...
boot loaders (FSBL, first-stage boot loader) located on fixed disks and removable drives must fit into the first 446 bytes of the Masterbootrecord in...
scheme is C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, while its ID in the masterbootrecord (MBR) partition-table scheme is 0xEF. Both GPT- and MBR-partitioned...
to the attacker, and erase them. Finally the virus overwrites the masterbootrecord of the infected computer, making it unusable. The virus was used for...
the map) and unused (free space) on disk, unlike the minimal x86 masterbootrecord that only accounts for used non-map partitions. This means that every...
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