Boot Record View

The boot record is located in the first sector of the file system. You can find a mirror boot sector at the end of the file system.

The Boot Record View is arranged as follows:

• Sector indicates at which sector on the actual drive you currently are.
• Valid or invalid boot sector tells you whether the current data area is indeed a boot record.
• NTFS signature shows which operating system formatted the drive.
• Bytes per sector displays the number of bytes per sector (usually 512).
• Sectors per cluster displays the number of sectors per cluster (usually 1-8, possible numbers -128, compression works only -8).
• Media descriptor describes the kind of drive (F8 - Hard Drive).
• Sectors/FAT is an unknown entry in the boot record.
• Sectors per track represents the value of max. head x sector used when the volume was created.
• Heads gives the head value used when the volume was created.
• Hidden sectors is the number of sectors preceding the first sector of the volume.
• Physical drive displays the number of the drive (1st HD = 128, 2nd HD = 129, 1st Floppy drive =0).
• Sectors in volume gives the total number of sectors in the volume.
• 1st MFT cluster is the cluster number of the start of the Master File Table.
• 1st MFT mirror cluster is the cluster number of the start of the mirrored MFT.
• Clusters/file record indicates the size of the MFT record (F6 means the MFT record size is 1024 bytes, any other number means the MFT record size in bytes is this number x cluster size).
• Clusters/Index block indicates the index block size (F4 means the index block size is 4096 bytes, any other number means the index block size in bytes is this number x cluster size).
• Serial number is the serial number of the volume.

The entries in the boot record view are displayed in hexadecimal format in the first column, and in decimal format in the second column.

When you are in Boot Record view and the current data area in not a valid boot record, the area will be marked 'Invalid' on the screen.

See also: View

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