The first sector of partition is also known as the Boot Sector. What the MBR is for the entire drive, that the Boot Sector is the first sector of an individual partition, like the MBR, the Boot Sector contains information that the system needs to locate the materials that are needed to start the operating system. A corrupt or missing Boot Sector is a serious problem. Without it, the partition can not be accessed.
Possible (but not all) symptoms
Invalid media type reading drive
Abort, Retry, Fail?
File system is displayed as "RAW"
Windows may ask if you want to format the drive
File names contain "weird" characters
"Sector not found" messages
Recover lost files
If you want to recover files due to deletion, format, partition lost or damage, system crash, etc. especially under Windows Vista/2008/Windows 7, our free data recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free is recommended. It works well with hardware RAID and hard drives, SD and Memory Cards, etc.
Step 1. Select the drive where you lose your data and click "Search for Lost Data".
Step 2. Use "Filter" or "Search" to find the lost files when the scan completes.
Step 3. Select all the files you want and click "Recover". Then, browse another secure location to save them.
💡Tip: You can restore data on the local disks, external hard drives, and also the cloud storage.
Fix Boot Sector
1. If you cannot access the FAT16/NTFS partition and the partition was marked with "X", right-click the partition and choose Fixboot. Partition Table Doctor will automatically check and repair the Boot Sector of the partition.
2. If you cannot access the FAT32 partition and the partition was marked with "X", right-click the partition and choose Fixboot. There are two choices:
"Auto" mode: Partition Table Doctor will automatically check and repair the Boot Sector of the partition. We recommend you choose this model.
If the "Auto" mode doesn't work, you could choose "Interactive" mode. You must input the Label for the partition or file name (the file is in the Root Folder). If you do not know what file name to input, follow the file name that is suggested:
Bootable partition:
io.sys, msdos.sys, ntldr, bootlog.txt
Other partitions:
_restore, recycled
File name can not support long name or wildcard character by DOS version of Partition Table Doctor.
3. Browse: In both of the modes, Partition Table Doctor will provide you a preview of the folders and files in the root directory on this partition before "Yes" option being chosen to make the change valid on a dialogue box. If it appears the same as the previous one that means this function can fix it.
4. Save and reboot computer and you will find everything is just what it was, backup your files!!!
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Daisy is the Senior editor of the writing team for EaseUS. She has been working at EaseUS for over ten years, starting as a technical writer and moving on to being a team leader of the content group. As a professional author for over ten years, she writes a lot to help people overcome their tech troubles.
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EaseUS data recovery experts have uneaqualed expertise to repair disks/systems and salvage data from all devices like RAID, HDD, SSD, USB, etc.