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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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EXAM TIP Only one master boot record and one partition table within that

master boot record exist per MBR disk. Each partition has a partition boot

sector.

MBR partition tables support two types of partitions: primary partitions

and extended partitions. Primary partitions are designed to support bootable

operating systems. Extended partitions are not bootable. A single MBR disk

may have up to four primary partitions or up to three primary partitions and

one extended partition.

Primary Partitions and Multiple Operating Systems

Primary partitions are usually assigned drive letters and appear in Windows

Explorer/File Explorer (once you format them). The first lettered primary

partition in Windows is always C:. After that, you can label the partitions D:

through Z:.

NOTE Partitions don’t always get drive letters. Windows creates a small

primary partition named “System Reserved” for essential Windows boot

files. See also the section “Mounting Partitions as Folders,” later in this

chapter, for details.

In a related topic, the first primary Windows partition is called “C:”

because early PCs had one or two floppy drives installed and they got the

“A:” and “B:” labels.

Only primary partitions can boot operating systems. On an MBR disk, you

can easily install four different operating systems, each on its own primary

partition, and boot to your choice each time you fire up the computer.

Every primary partition on a single drive has a special setting stored in the

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