

: 971īefore Windows 7, the system and boot partitions were, by default, the same and were given the "C:" drive letter. However, in case they are separate, the boot partition does not contain the boot loader and the system partition does not have the system root. : 174Ī single partition may be both a system and a boot partition. The boot partition (or boot volume) is the disk partition that contains the operating system folder, known as the system root or %systemroot% in Windows NT.: 1087 This partition holds the boot sector and is marked active.
#Create boot partition vista software#

Since Windows NT 3.1 (the first version of Windows NT), Microsoft has defined the terms as follows: In Linux, a single partition can be both a boot and a system partition if both /boot/ and the root directory are in the same partition. By default, in Linux, operating system files are mounted at / (the root directory). The system partition is the disk partition that contains the operating system folder, known as the system root.Despite Microsoft's radically different definition (see below), System Information, a utility app included in Windows NT family of operating systems, refers to it as "boot device". For example, in the standard Linux directory layout ( Filesystem Hierarchy Standard), boot files (such as the kernel, initrd, and boot loader GRUB) are mounted at /boot/. The boot partition is a primary partition that contains the boot loader, a piece of software responsible for booting the operating system.In context of every operating system, except those developed by Microsoft, the system partition and the boot partition are defined as follows:
