<P> The total data storage space of a PC HDD on which MBR partitioning is implemented can contain at most four primary partitions, or alternatively three primary partitions and an extended partition . The Partition Table, located in the master boot record, contains 16 - byte entries, each of which describes a partition . </P> <P> The partition type is identified by a 1 - byte code found in its partition table entry . Some of these codes (such as 0x05 and 0x0F) may be used to indicate the presence of an extended partition . Most are used by an operating system's bootloader (that examines partition tables) to decide if a partition contains a file system that can be used to mount / access for reading or writing data . </P> <P> A primary partition contains one file system . In DOS and all early versions of Microsoft Windows systems, Microsoft required what it called the system partition to be the first partition . All Windows operating systems from Windows 95 onwards can be located on (almost) any partition, but the boot files (io. sys, bootmgr, ntldr, etc .) must reside on a primary partition . However, other factors, such as a PC's BIOS (see Boot sequence on standard PC) may also impose specific requirements as to which partition must contain the primary OS . </P> <P> The partition type code for a primary partition can either correspond to a file system contained within (e.g. 0x07 means either an NTFS or an OS / 2 HPFS file system) or indicate that the partition has a special use (e.g. code 0x82 usually indicates a Linux swap partition). The FAT16 and FAT32 file systems have made use of a number of partition type codes due to the limits of various DOS and Windows OS versions . Though a Linux operating system may recognize a number of different file systems (ext4, ext3, ext2, ReiserFS, etc .), they have all consistently used the same partition type code: 0x83 (Linux native file system). </P>

What is the primary partition of a hard drive
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