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A boot disk is a removable digital data storage medium from which a computer can load and run (boot) an operating system or utility program. [1] The computer must have a built-in program which will load and execute a program from a boot disk meeting certain standards. While almost all modern computers can boot from a hard drive containing the ...
A boot sector is the sector of a persistent data storage device (e.g., hard disk, floppy disk, optical disc, etc.) which contains machine code to be loaded into random-access memory (RAM) and then executed by a computer system 's built-in firmware (e.g., the BIOS). Usually, the first sector of the hard disk is the boot sector, regardless of ...
Various I/O protocols can be used, SPI being the most common. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI, / ˈjuːɪfaɪ / or as an acronym) [c] is a specification that defines an architecture for the platform firmware used for booting a computer's hardware and its interface for interaction with the operating system.
System partition and boot partition. The system partition and the boot partition (also known as the system volume and the boot volume) are computing terms for disk partitions of a hard disk drive or solid-state drive that must exist and be properly configured for a computer to operate. There are two different definitions for these terms: the ...
Booting. A flow diagram of a computer booting. In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button on the computer or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so some process must load software into memory ...
EFI system partition. The EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) system partition or ESP is a partition on a data storage device (usually a hard disk drive or solid-state drive) that is used by computers that have the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). When a computer is booted, UEFI firmware loads files stored on the ESP to start ...
Bootloader. GNU GRUB, a popular open source bootloader. Windows bootloader. A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader[1][2] or called bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer. If it also provides an interactive menu with multiple boot choices then it's often called a boot manager.
If the sector is read successfully, some BIOSes will also check for the boot sector signature 0x55 0xAA in the last two bytes of the sector (which is 512 bytes long), before accepting a boot sector and considering the device bootable. [b] When a bootable device is found, the BIOS transfers control to the loaded sector.