MBR, the short for Master Boot Record and commonly known as the sector 0, is the first sector of the computer which holds the key to loading the operating system. It also contains crucial information about the logical partitioning of the hard drive. Understanding the Master Boot Record isn’t all so easy but for all those computer enthusiasts, we have managed to put up what it means; its purpose and functioning alongside some defects it has here in this article.
What is the MBR ( Master Boot Record ) ?
MBR (Master Boot Record) is that place within the hard drive into which the BIOS can load the initial boot program. This program then starts the process for loading the operating system. Also, in every hard drive the MBR is a starting point which contains information about the number of partitions and their types.
Usually we come across this while partitioning a new hard drive so that it gets the ability to store information. Like MBR, GPT (GUID partition table) is another way of storing the partitioning information in the drive.
The master boot record is sometimes called a ‘master partition table’; this is because it contains a table which has in it the details about each and every hard drive partition, the hard drive is formatted into. The next structure is that which contains a small computer code, which when run starts the boot process. This process hands over the control to the operating system as soon as it is loaded into the RAM.
By now you must have understood how crucial role the MBR plays in booting up your computer. Any slight modification of information present in this record could totally disturb the boot up process. Due to this reason, it is very sensitive and a virus attack in this region is really going to hurt!
These viruses can corrupt that little piece of code present in the master boot record and completely destroy the hard drive, not to mention the booting process as well. In such cases you are to repair your MBR.
The little disadvantage the MBR carries with it is that it can handle only up to 2TB. Due to this it supports only a maximum of 4 partitions. But anyways, it isn’t really such a bottleneck.