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A Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) is a partition of a data storage device that uses the GUID Partition Table (GPT) layout. The Windows operating system uses this partition for compatibility purposes. No meaningful data is stored within the MSR. Rather, when compatibility needs arise, Windows shrinks this partition to make way for other ...
According to Microsoft, the basic data partition is the equivalent to master boot record (MBR) partition types 0x06 , 0x07 (NTFS or exFAT), and 0x0B . [2] In practice, it is equivalent to 0x01 ( FAT12 ), 0x04 ( FAT16 ), 0x0C (FAT32 with logical block addressing ), and 0x0E (FAT16 with logical block addressing) types as well.
The limit on partition size was dictated by the 8-bit signed count of sectors per cluster, which originally had a maximum power-of-two value of 64. With the standard hard disk sector size of 512 bytes, this gives a maximum of 32 KB cluster size, thereby fixing the "definitive" limit for the FAT16 partition size at 2 GB for sector size 512.
Furthermore, GPT-aware OSes may check the protective MBR and if the enclosed partition type is not of type EEh or if there are multiple partitions defined on the target device, the OS may refuse to manipulate the partition table. [10] If the actual size of the disk exceeds the maximum partition size representable using the legacy 32-bit LBA ...
The maximum NTFS volume size implemented in Windows XP Professional is 2 32 − 1 clusters, partly due to partition table limitations. For example, using 64 KB clusters, the maximum size Windows XP NTFS volume is 256 TB minus 64 KB. Using the default cluster size of 4 KB, the maximum NTFS volume size is 16 TB minus 4 KB.
All Windows operating systems from Windows 95 onwards can be located on (almost) any partition, but the boot files (io.sys, bootmgr, ntldr, etc.) must reside on a primary partition. However, other factors, such as a PC's BIOS (see Boot sequence on standard PC ) may also impose specific requirements as to which partition must contain the primary OS.
D: to Z: — Other disk partitions get labeled here. Windows assigns the next free drive letter to the next drive it encounters while enumerating the disk drives on the system. Drives can be partitioned, thereby creating more drive letters. This applies to MS-DOS, as well as all Windows operating systems.
UEFI support in Windows began in 2008 with Windows Vista SP1. [22] The Windows boot manager is located at the \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ subfolder of the EFI system partition. [23] On Windows XP 64-Bit Edition and later, access to the EFI system partition is obtained by running the mountvol command. Mounts the EFI system partition on the specified drive.