jdude45 wrote:
Sasha Sheremetov,
"If you're working with portable USB drive (single partition) it may begin with boot sector, BIOS parameter block isn't required since it's not bootable device."
That was a guess that I had made. I formatted a USB drive and found no MBR.
Every boot sector requires a BIOS Parameter Block, irrespective of whether the volume is bootable or non-bootable. The BPB contains information that defines the file system and the location of its important components. These include sector size, cluster size, volume size, location of MFT (for NTFS) and size and number of FATs (for FAT file systems).
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan. ... block.htmlA non-bootable volume does not require boot code, either in the MBR or VBR.
A storage device configured as a "super floppy" does not require an MBR or partition table. In such cases the VBR is located in sector 0, ie the MBR and VBR are essentially the same. For compatibility purposes, one could add a dummy partition table with a single entry that points to a boot sector at sector 0 rather than the usual 63 or 2048.
Here is such an example:
Akai MPC2000 MIDI / Music Production Centre - analysis of file system:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=132Sector 0 is both an MBR and VBR. It contains both a FAT16 BPB and DOS partition table. There is no boot code, only a JMP 00 instruction that executes an infinite loop if you try to boot the drive.