What Is a Boot Sector?

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Jonathan Ayres with "Network for Success" and today we are going to talk about what is a boot sector? A boot sector refers to the hard drive on your computer. All computers have a hard drive and on the hard drive is where the operating system resides. Most people would be familiar with an operating system being Windows like Windows XP or Windows Vista. Now you have to install the operating system on your hard drive in order for you to have a computer that you can operate with your desktop and your applications and so forth so on a hard drive you install the operating system. Now here's an example of a hard drive right here and this hard drive has inside of it right where this circle is a number of platters made out of iron and other materials and these platters are where the information is stored and where the hard drive is stored stores the information. On the platters we have areas if you'll think about it that are closer to the center and farther away from the center. Now you have a device that reads across these platters to take that information and give it back to you so it makes sense that the closer to the center the quicker it can get that information because the circle is smaller whereas on the outside circle it would take longer because it would take more time for that information to get around to where that head reads that information. So right up around the very closest part to the center is the area where we start loading the operating system to make it operate quickly so we want to load from the center and then put our operating system and then our applications and data and storage farther out towards the edge of the platter where it takes longer to get access to it but you know the operating system is the tool that you are using to get that information so it needs to be fastest. Right around the very first what we call the first ring on the platters is what we call the boot sector and the boot sector is where the information is coded on to that hard drive to tell the computer how to start itself up and it gives commands so when you turn it on the hard drive turns itself on and goes to that boot sector and the boot sector comes back and it says perform these following functions and then it boots the computer up so it makes sure the hard drive is turning and running at proper speeds and it turns on any peripherals like a CD reader or anything else you might have connected up, etc. etc. as your computer boots up until you finally have a Desktop screen in front of you. So that area where they first initially code the information from the operating system on the very first ring is called the boot sector."