Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!virtech!cpcahil From: cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: DOS Structure on Hard Disk - A Question Keywords: DOS, boot record, FAT, confusion, cold fusion Message-ID: <1113@virtech.UUCP> Date: 2 Sep 89 02:24:13 GMT References: <1626@cod.NOSC.MIL> Organization: Virtual Technologies Inc Lines: 18 In article <1626@cod.NOSC.MIL>, desmond@cod.NOSC.MIL (J. Desmond) writes: > > Recently, out of curiosity, I started to take a deep look at > how DOS is structured on my hard disk. All the manuals say that the > boot record is the absolutely no kidding very first thing on the > disk. And that's exactly what shows up with DEBUG and NORTON U's The first sector on the disk contains the partition table which is read by the bios and which indicates the location of the "active" partition whose first sector must contain the bootstrap program. This info is described in heavy detail in the "Norton's Guide to the IBM PC". -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Conor P. Cahill uunet!virtech!cpcahil 703-430-9247 ! | Virtual Technologies Inc., P. O. Box 876, Sterling, VA 22170 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+