The Byte 0B (Hex) at offset 04H is the File System Indicator Byte for the Partition. The Byte 0B (H) Represents that the Partition is having the FAT32 file system. The table for various file systems and their file system indicator bytes have been given next:
File system Indicator Byte in Hexadecimal |
Partition/ File system Description |
00H |
Unused/Empty Partition-Table Entry
(Remember this is not used to designate unused area on the disk, but marks an unused partition table entry) |
01H |
DOS 12-bit fat
(The type 01H is for partitions up to 15 MB) |
02H |
XENIX: root file system |
03H |
XENIX /usr file system (obsolete)
(XENIX is an old part of Unix V7. Microsoft XENIX Operating System was announced in August 1980. It was a portable and commercial version of the Unix operating system for the Intel 8086, Zilog Z8000, Motorola M68000 and Digital Equipment PDP-11. Microsoft introduced XENIX 3.0 in April 1983. SCO delivered its first XENIX for 8088/8086 in 1983.) |
04H |
16-bit FAT, DOS 3.0+ (Partition size < 32M)
(Some old DOS versions have had a bug which required this partition to be located in the 1st physical 32 MB of the hard disk ) |
05H |
DOS Extended (DOS 3.3+ Extended Volume)
Supports at most 8.4 GB disks. With this type 05H DOS/Windows will not use the extended BIOS call, even if it is available.) |
06H |
16-bit FAT, DOS Big, DOS 3.31+ (Partition Size >= 32M)
(Partitions are at most 2 GB for DOS and Windows 95/98 with maximum 65536 clusters with each cluster, at most 32 KB. Windows NT can create up to 4 GB FAT16 partition using 64 KB clusters.) |
07H |
OS/2 IFS (Installable File System) (HPFS is the best known example of this file system. OS/2 only looks at partitions with ID 7 for any installed IFS this is the reason that EXT2 IFS packet includes a special "Linux partition filter" device driver to fool OS/2 into thinking Linux partitions have ID 07). |
07H |
Advanced Unix |
07H |
Windows NT NTFS |
07H |
QNX2.x (pre-1988)
(For the actual file system of partition type 07H, one should inspect the partition boot record) |
08H |
OS/2 (v1.0 to v1.3 only) |
08H |
AIX boot partition
[AIX (Advanced Interactive Executive) is the IBM's version of Unix] |
08H |
SplitDrive |
08H |
DELL partition spanning multiple drives |
08H |
Commodore DOS |
08H |
QNX 1.x and 2.x
("qny" according to QNX partitions) |
09H |
AIX data partition |
09H |
Coherent file system
[Coherent was a UNIX like Operating System for the 286-386-486 systems, marketed by Mark Williams Company led by Bob Swartz. It was renowned for its good documentation. It was introduced in 1980 and died 1 Feb 1995. The last versions are V3.2 for 286-386-486 and V4.0 (May 1992, using protected mode) for 386-486 only. It sold for $99 a copy and it is rumored that 40000 copies have been sold. A Coherent partition has to be primary. ] |
09H |
QNX 1.x and 2.x ("qnz" according to QNX Partitions) |
0aH |
OS/2 Boot Manager
(OS/2 is the operating system designed by Microsoft and IBM to be the successor of MS-DOS) |
0aH |
Coherent swap partition |
0aH |
OPUS
(Open Parallel Unisys Server) |
0bH |
WIN95 OSR2 32-bit FAT
(OSR2 stands for Microsoft’s “OEM Service Release 2”. It is for Partitions up to 2047GB. Almost always, Windows 95/98/ME have the same File system which is FAT-32, within the same partitions limits) |
0cH |
LBA-mapped WIN95 OSR2 32-bit FAT
(It is using Logical Block Addressing – mode of Interrupt 13H extensions therefore we can say that this is the Extended INT 13H equivalent of 0BH. Almost always, Windows 95/98/ME have the same File system which is FAT-32, within the same partitions limits) |
0eH |
LBA-mapped WIN95: DOS 16-bit FAT or Logical Block Addressable VFAT
(It is same as 06H but using LBA-mode of INT 13H) |
0fH |
LBA-mapped WIN95: Extended partition or Logical Block Addressable VFAT
(It is same as 05H but using LBA-mode of INT 13H. Windows 95 uses 0EH and 0FH as the extended INT13H equivalents of 06H and 05H. Windows NT does not recognize the four Windows 95/98/ME types 0BH, 0CH, 0EH and 0FH) |
10H |
OPUS
(Octal Program Updating System) |
11H |
Hidden DOS 12-bit FAT or OS/2 Boot Manager hidden 12-bit FAT partition or DOS Seen From OS/2 (When OS/2 Boot manager boots a DOS partition, it will hide all primary DOS partitions except the one that is booted, by changing its ID and 01H, 04H, 06H and 07H becomes 11H, 14H, 16H and 17H, respectively. |
12H |
Compaq Configuration/diagnostics partition
(It is used by Compaq for their configuration utility partition. It is a FAT-compatible partition that boots into their utilities, and can be added to a LILO menu as if it were MS-DOS. ) |
14H |
(Hidden DOS 16-bit FAT or OS/2 Boot Manager Hidden DOS 16-bit FAT) <32M Partition
(Partition size is less than 32M. ID 14H is resulted from using Novell DOS 7.0 FDISK to delete Linux Native partition. ) |
15H |
Hidden DOS-Extended |
16H |
(Hidden DOS 16-bit FAT or OS/2 Boot Manager hidden 16-bit FAT ) >=32M Partition |
17H |
OS/2 Boot Manager hidden HPFS partition or Hidden IFS (e.g., HPFS) |
17H |
Hidden NTFS partition |
18H |
AST SmartSleep Partition or AST special Windows swap file ("Zero-Volt Suspend" partition)
[AST Research, Inc. (named from first initials of the founders, Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey and Thomas Yuen). Ascentia laptops have a “Zero – Volt Suspend Partition” or `SmartSleep Partition' of size 2MB+memory size.] |
