Please explain what is MBR partition, GPT partition, EFI partition, MSR partition? What is the use of each?

1, MBR (Main Boot Record?) is located in the entire hard disk 0 track 0 column 1 sector. MBR sector in the computer boot process plays a very important role in the computer, the computer presses the power supply, began to execute the motherboard's BIOS program, a series of detection and configuration, began to set up a system boot sequence in accordance with the CMOS. The first step in the process is to make sure that the system is ready for the next generation of PCs.

2. GPT partition mode uses the GUID partition table, a newer standard for disk partition table structure derived from the EFI standard. GPT provides a more flexible disk partitioning mechanism than the commonly used Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme.

3. An EFI system partition (English: EFI system partition, abbreviated as ESP) is a physical partition in FAT16 or FAT32 format, but its partition identifier is EF (hexadecimal) instead of the regular 0E or 0C, so the partition is generally invisible under Windows operating systems.

The EFI system partition can be used by the UEFI BIOS to boot the system, storing that portion of the EFI Extended Functionality that the BIOS/EFI NAND chip does not store. PCs that support EFI mode need to boot the system from the ESP, and EFI firmware can load EFI boot programs or applications from the ESP. the ESP is the system boot partition.

4, MSR partition (Microsoft Reserved Partition, abbreviated MSR) that is, Microsoft reserved (MSR) partition. It is a part of every Windows operating system on the GUID partition table (GPT). (GPT) is required by every Windows operating system (windows 7 and above). System components can allocate parts of the MSR partition to new partitions for their use.

Expanded Information

In order to address the volume size limitations of FAT16 and to allow DOS's real mode to handle the format without reducing the amount of regular memory available if not necessary, Microsoft decided to implement a new generation of FAT called FAT32 with 32-bit clusters, of which 28 bits are currently used. 28 bits.

Theoretically, this would support a total of 268,435,438 (<2) clusters, allowing for disk capacities of up to 8 TB.However, due to limitations imposed by Microsoft's scandisk utility, FAT32 can't be larger than 4,177,920 (<2) clusters, which limits the capacity of the volume to 124.55 GB, unless one no longer uses the "scandisk".

FAT32 was released with Windows 95OSR2, although reformatting was required to use the format and was never supported by DriveSpace3 (the version that came with Windows 95OSR2 and Windows 98.) Windows 98 provided a utility to convert an Windows 98 provides a tool to convert existing hard disks from FAT16 to FAT32 format without losing data. Support for it in the NT product line began with Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write FAT32 filesystems of any size, but the formatting programs on these platforms can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32GB.