Track0

Article summary

Track0 (pronounced 'track zero') is the area located at the start of a computer disk and is predominantly used to store information regarding the layout of the disk (the partition table) and executable code needed to boot an operating system. Track0 typically consists of the first 64 sectors of the disk (since each sector is normally 512 bytes, this corresponds to 32,768 bytes = 32KiB). Since the first sector of a disk is sector zero, the first 64 sectors are sectors 0 to 63. The first sector of Track0 is known as the master boot record (MBR) and contains the initial code used to boot the operating system (bootstrap code). Near the end of the MBR is the Partition Table: a predefined structure containing the layout of the disk. Track0 is also increasingly used to store licensing information for particular pieces of software because it is an area of the disk outside of the OS filesystem and not seen or used by most computer users (and therefore cannot be easily modified or replicated). The origins of Track0 came about from the original specifications of PCs, where computer hard disks were defined in terms of Cylinders, Heads and Sectors (CHS system). In this context, Track0 was defined to be all the sectors on the first cylinder and first head.…

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