what is system partition and boot partition?

[Adrian]

Hi,
Can I ask what's mean by system partition, boot partition, and system
partition root? Thx.

Adrian

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

A system partition is the drive or volume that houses the main operating
system installation (IE: \Windows or \Winnt).

The boot partition is the active partition that houses the boot files
(ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini). This is where the system BIOS looks to for
information about how to start the Operating System (IE: where is \Windows
on the system: which drive, which volume on that drive, and what folder the
operating system is in).

The root of any drive is the basic level, EG: C:\. If I were to tell you
that boot.ini is on the root of the boot partition, that means you should
find it directly on the drive that houses the boot files, not in a folder
someplace on that drive. If you were to click on C:\ in Windows Explorer, in
addition to the folders (directories), you should also see a few other
miscellaneous files on the root.

Hope that helps.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Torgeir Bakken (MVP)]

A system partition is the drive or volume that houses the main operating
system installation (IE: \Windows or \Winnt).

The boot partition is the active partition that houses the boot files
(ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini). This is where the system BIOS looks to for
information about how to start the Operating System (IE: where is \Windows
on the system: which drive, which volume on that drive, and what folder the
operating system is in).

Hi

Actually, Microsoft's definition is exactly the opposite (from the
WinXP help file):

System partition
The partition that contains the hardware-specific files needed to load
Windows (for example, Ntldr, Osloader, Boot.ini, Ntdetect.com).

Boot partition
The partition that contains the Windows operating system and its
support files.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Can I ask what's mean by system partition, boot partition, and system
partition root? Thx.

Microsoft has very weird naming in this area.

When you boot a system up it first reads files on the active partition
of the hard disk, to get things going: in the case of XP this reads the
boot.ini file there to find where to look for the Windows folder, where
the system files are. This might be a different partition - indeed a
different physical disk.

Now you would think the first of these would logically be called the
'boot' partition, and the second the 'system' partition. No Way.
Microsoft names them the other way round - you boot into the System
partition, then find windows in the Boot partition.

Either way, 'root' means at the start of the directory structure - so
given that C: is the system partition (as it almost always is), the
system partition root is C:\ - as opposed to C:\Program files\ say

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Definition of System and Boot Partition
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q100525

Bruce Chambers
--
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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Ironic isn't it?

No idea why they do that, as it is not the convention used anywhere else,
and I've mentioned it on a number of occasions to some contacts.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone