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This is a 32-bit value that is intended to identify uniquely the disk medium (as opposed to the disk unit—the two not necessarily being the same for removable hard disks). The disk signature was introduced by Windows NT version 3.5, but it is now used by several operating systems, including the Linux kernel version 2.6 and later. Linux tools ...
Formerly, on disks formatted using the master boot record (MBR) partition layout, certain software components used hidden sectors of the disk for data storage purposes. For example, the Logical Disk Manager (LDM), on dynamic disks, stores metadata in a 1 MB area at the end of the disk which is not allocated to any partition.
The system partition is the disk partition that contains the operating system folder, known as the system root. By default, in Linux, operating system files are mounted at / (the root directory ). In Linux, a single partition can be both a boot and a system partition if both /boot/ and the root directory are in the same partition.
Since the first sector of a disk is sector zero, the first 64 sectors are sectors 0 to 63. The first sector of Track0 is known as the master boot record (MBR) and contains the initial code used to boot the operating system (bootstrap code). Near the end of the MBR is the Partition Table: a predefined structure containing the layout of the disk.
Microsoft: FAQs on Using GPT disks in Windows; Microsoft Technet: How Basic Disks and Volumes Work A bit MS-specific but good figures relate GPT to older MBR format and protective-MBR, shows layouts of complete disks, and how to interpret partition-table hexdumps. Apple Developer Connection: Secrets of the GPT
Linux and similar operating systems designate IDE hard disks as /dev/hda for the first hard disk, /dev/hdb for the second hard disk, and so on. Likewise SCSI and in later kernels also IDE and SATA hard disks are identified as /dev/sda for the first disk, etc. The up to four partitions defined in the master boot record are designated as /dev/hda1...
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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 ...