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MBR

MBR stands for Master Boot Record.
The MBR is the first sector (512 bytes) on a harddisk.
The first 440 (446?, 444?) bytes is occupied by the bootstrapper.
The remaining 64(???) bytes is the partition table that describes the partitions on the harddisk.

Area between MBR and first partition

This area goes by various names:
It is usually at least 31 KB (63 sectors). For performance reasons, more modern disks align on larger boundaries, so the first partition might start at 1 MiB.

Limitations

Partition size limit of 2TiB.

TODO

https://github.com/joyent/syslinux/tree/master/mbr
sa
GRUB, GPT
/boot/grub/i386-pc/boot.img
MBR2GPT.EXE converts a disk with a MBR partition to a GPT partition.
bootsect.exe

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