Major Disk Structures and the Boot Process

Posted May 17th, 2007 by eugene

Reprinted, with permission, from The PC Guide

Major Disk Structures and the Boot Process

A Brief History of the Hard Disk Drive
Construction and Operation of the Hard Disk Drive
Hard Disk Geometry and Low-Level Data Structures
Hard Disk Performance, Quality and Reliability
Hard Disk BIOS and Capacity Factors
Hard Disk Interfaces and Configuration
Hard Disk Logical Structures and File Systems

Operating Systems and File Systems
PC File Systems
Major Disk Structures and the Boot Process

Master Boot Record (MBR)
Primary, Extended and Logical Partitions
Volume Boot Sectors
Active Partitions and Boot Managers
The DOS Boot Process
Boot Sector Viruses

FAT File System Disk Volume Structures
Clusters and File Allocation
Partitioning, Partition Sizes and Drive Lettering
Disk Partitioning and Formatting Programs
Disk Compression

There are several major disk structures that are used to organize and control the storage of information on the PC using the FAT / FAT32 / VFAT file system. These structures are important to understand, since they control the way the hard disk works from a software perspective.

Next: Master Boot Record (MBR)

Major Disk Structures and the Boot Process

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