User`s guide

Block

See Sector (p. 91).

Boot sector

The first sector (p. 91) of a disk (p. 84) or a volume (p. 93) that contains the initial code to start the

operating system.

The boot sector must end with a hexadecimal signature of 0xAA55.

Boot volume

The volume which contains files that are necessary for a particular Windows operating system to

start and work.

If only one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, the boot volume is usually the

same as the system volume (p. 93).

If more than one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, each of these operating

systems normally has its own boot volume, whereas there is still only one system volume.

In terms of volume type, a boot volume can be a primary or logical volume on a basic disk, or a

simple volume on a dynamic disk.

See also system volume (p. 93).

Bootable media

A physical media (CD, DVD, USB flash drive or other media supported by a machine BIOS as a boot

device) that contains a bootable version of Acronis Disk Director or Windows Preinstallation

Environment (WinPE) with the Acronis Plug-in for WinPE.

A machine can also be booted into the above environments using the network boot from Acronis PXE

Server or Microsoft Remote Installation Service (RIS). These servers with uploaded bootable

components can also be thought of as a kind of bootable media.

Bootable media is most often used to create basic or dynamic volumes on bare metal.

Booting

The process of starting a machine when the machine is turned on or reset.

When the machine boots, its hardware runs a program known as a boot loader, which in turn starts

the selected operating system.

A machine that cannot boot normally—for example, because a volume with the operating system is

not available—is called unbootable.

Some operations, such as resizing the system volume in Windows, require rebooting the machine.