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The MBR code of OS/2, MS-DOS (prior to 7.0), PC DOS (up to 7.10), and Windows NT (up to ca. 2007) happens to provide this same interface as well, although these systems do not make use of it. The MBR installed by Windows NT 6.0 (and higher) uses other registers, and is therefore no longer compatible with these extensions.
A master boot record (MBR) is a type of boot sector in the first block of partitioned computer mass storage devices like fixed disks or removable drives intended for use with IBM PC-compatible systems and beyond.
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.
Usually, the first sector of the hard disk is the boot sector, regardless of sector size (512 or 4096 bytes) and partitioning flavor (MBR or GPT). The purpose of defining one particular sector as the boot sector is inter-operability between firmware and various operating systems.
The total data storage space of a PC HDD on which MBR partitioning is implemented can contain at most four primary partitions, or alternatively three primary partitions and an extended partition. The Partition Table , located in the master boot record, contains 16-byte entries, each of which describes a partition.
The partition type (or partition ID) in a partition's entry in the partition table inside a master boot record (MBR) is a byte value intended to specify the file system the partition contains or to flag special access methods used to access these partitions (e.g. special CHS mappings, LBA access, logical mapped geometries, special driver access, hidden partitions, secured or encrypted file ...
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On MBR disks, such boot loaders typically use the sectors immediately following the MBR for this storage; that space is usually known as the "MBR gap". No equivalent unused space exists on GPT disks, and the BIOS boot partition is a way to officially allocate such space for use by the boot loader.