what does marking a partition as "active" do?

[PremiumG]

what does marking a partition as "active" do?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Isn't that the old FDISK way of marking a partition as the bootable partition? DOS wouldn't boot if the C:\ partition wasn't marked as active.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
Isn't that the old FDISK way of marking a partition as the bootable partition? DOS wouldn't boot if the C:\ partition wasn't marked as active.

Yup

 

[Nothinman]

Just sets a bit in the partition table, if you really want you can set multiple partitions active with certain partition tools.

The basic MS MBR looks for the first active partition and then passes control off to it, nothing more. If you've installed a 3rd party boot record setting a partition active may or may not do anything at all.