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#11
Hi folks,
Sorry to chip in here during your discussion. Early on in the thread i thought i understood why the 100mb boot partition exists. However the more you learned folk discuss the details the more lost I've become. I'm a real noob here and so I'll ask two questions, the first of which will reveal how little I know:
A) on a brand new hdd, and a clean install of w7 will windows automatically create this 100mb boot partition?
B) is there a tutorial or wiki somewhere where I can read up on the standard structure of a windows install? Infer totally lost with primary, active, sys reserved, normal partitions etc. I really could do with understanding this once and for all so I am not guessing!
Many thanks
Matt
ad A) depends. If you install into a predefined partition, it will not create the 100MBs. If you install on a blank disk, it may depending whether it is a retail version or an OEM version.
ad B) I am sure there are many tutorials. You could just Google it. Here is an example that explains the NTFS partition structure: NTFS Architecture Overview Else there is always Wikipedia: Disk partitioning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thanks very much for the info and the links. Very informative - especially the PC Guide info on ntfs architecture. Much appreciated. After reading that lot and now also having googles about the 100 mb boot partition (i didn't realise only w7 adds this toba clean install) I have a final architecture question:
A user in these forums stated that recent ms os' don't need to be in a primary partition to work. He said he was running pre release w7 from a logical drive in his extended partition
This contradicts everything I've read because to boot that os in that logical drive you need to make the drive active right? And you aren't allowed to make logical partitions active - so help? What he doing?
Matt
Hello Matt.
As long as there is another Windows Operating System (OS) booting from a primary partition, a second (or third) can be run from an extended/logical partition, they will share the files needed to boot; that is part of the reason (among several others) for the introduction of the SysResv partition, so all the boot files can be stored in one central location.
A Windows OS cannot boot independently from an extended/logical partition.
I hope this helps clear it up for you. :)
Here's a reference to the Master Boot Record, not to be confused with the Volume Boot Record (which is partition based).
Master boot record - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The MBR is where the BIOS firmware goes to hand over it's role in the boot sequence. In the MBR is the partition table with one partition location flagged or marked active. This is often the little 100MB partition we've been talking about.