User manual

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A method of hiding a partition consists in changing the partition ID value saved in the Partition Table. This is achieved by

XOR-ing the partition ID with a 0x10 hexadecimal value.

Master File Table (MFT) is a relational database that consists of rows of file records and columns of file attributes. It

contains at least one entry for every file on an NTFS volume, including the MFT itself. MFT is similar to a FAT table in a

FAT file system.

MBR & 1st track of the hard disk is the 0th sector of the disk. MBR (Master Boot Record) contains important

information about the disk layout:

- The used partitioning scheme;

- The starting records of the Partition Table;

- The standard bootstrap code (or the initial code of boot managers, disk overlay software or boot viruses).

Generally, the 0th sector is used for similar purposes in all existing partitioning schemes.

The MBR capacity is not sufficient to contain sophisticated boot programs. That’s why the on-boot software is allowed

to use the entire 0th track of the disk. For example, boot managing utilities such as LILO, GRUB and Paragon Boot

Manager are located in the 0th track.

Partition ID (or File system ID) is a file system identifier that is placed in the partition. It is used to quickly detect

partitions of supported types. A number of operating systems completely rely on it to distinguish supported partitions.

Partition ID is saved in appropriate entries of the Partition Table and takes only 1 byte of space.

Partition Label (or Volume Label) is a small textual field (up to 11 characters) that is located in the partition's boot

sector. This value is used for notification purposes only. It is detectable by any partitioning tool including the DOS FDISK

utility.

Modern operating systems save it within a file system, e.g. as a special hidden file. Thus it is able to contain a relatively

large amount of text in multiple languages.

Partitioning Scheme is a set of rules, constraints and format of the on-disk structures to keep information on partitions

located on a hard disk.

There are known several partitioning schemes. The most popular of them is the so-called DOS partitioning scheme. It

was introduced by IBM and Microsoft to use multiple partitions in the disk subsystems on IBM PC compatible

computers.

Another popular partitioning scheme is the so-called Logical Disks Model (LDM) that originates from the UNIX

mainframe systems. Veritas Executive accommodates a simplified version of LDM to the Windows 2000 operating

system.

Windows 2000 and XP support two quite different partitioning schemes: the old DOS partitioning scheme and the new

Dynamic Disk Management (DDM). The problem is that earlier versions of Windows do not support DDM. In addition,

most hard disk utilities do not support it as well.

Recovery Media is a CD/DVD disc, a USB flash card or even a floppy disk from which you can boot for maintenance or

recovery purposes.