Partition Loss in Windows Due to FAT Boot Sector Corruption

FAT boot sector is the first reserved physical sector of a logical FAT (File Allocation Table) partition. The logical partition may be primary partition, logical drive in extended partition or composite of more than one partition.

The FAT boot sector stores information that is used by the file system to access a particular partition. On the x86 processor based computers, the MBR (Master Boot Record) uses FAT boot sector on system partition for loading operating system's kernel files.

FAT boot sector is the reserved sector that contains an area known as BIOS Parameter Block (with basic file system information like its type and pointers to location of other sections) and generally stores the boot loader code of operating system.

Boot Process

Boot process of x86 based computers directly uses the file system boot sector to execute instructions. The boot process could be reviewed like the following:

1 POST (Power On Self Test) initiated by BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) and CPU (Central Process Unit).
2 BIOS decides which device to use for booting the system and loads first physical sector from boot device into memory and then transfers the CPU control to start of memory address. If the boot drive is hard drive, the sector is loaded in 2nd step and boot process is as underwritten.
3 MBR loads boot sector referenced by partition table for active primary partition into main memory and then transfers CPU control to start of the memory.

In this way you can see the importance of FAT boot sector for working of your computer systems. But occasionally, due to virus infection or hardware failure, FAT boot sector might become damaged. If your partition is an active primary partition or the partition holds operating system files, it could prevent your system from booting. Otherwise, it might simply prevent the access of data from the partition.

When FAT boot sector becomes corrupted, you might encounter one or more of the following error messages:

1 Invalid system disk
2 Disk I/O error
3 Non-System disk or disk error
4 Disk Boot failure
5 NTLDR missing

Generally when you notice the symptoms of FAT boot sector corruption, it is recommended to use third party Partition Recovery Software to retrieve the lost or missing partitions and data from them.

In order to ensure efficient and quick Partition Recovery, you need to go for powerful and advanced Partition Recovery Software such as Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery . It is capable of carrying out Partition Recovery from FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system based Windows partitions.

Phoenix Partition Recovery is compatible with the latest versions Windows Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000.