R. C. White said:
Hi, Gene.
If this will help to think about it: consider a multiboot system in
which
each OS is on its own partition. Clearly, in this case, only one
partition
could be the boot partition - the one with the boot menu - but each
other
OS will ultimately boot from its own partition.
Be careful how you use the term "boot partition"!
could be the boot partition - the one with the boot menu
But the partition with the boot menu is NOT the Boot Volume. It is the
System Partition.
And the "boot partition" is more properly called the "boot volume",
because it need not be a partition at all. It can be a logical drive
in an extended partition. But the System Partition, although sometimes
referred to as the "system volume", must be a primary partition.
but each other
OS will ultimately boot from its own partition.
No. Each will boot INTO its own boot volume. But each will START in
the System Partition - which will present the boot menu - after which
the boot process will branch to the chosen boot volume. A
multi-booting computer has multiple Boot Volumes, but only a single
System Partition.
Like a tree with one or more branches. No matter which branch will
eventually receive the water from the soil, the water's path up to the
branches must start in the trunk of the tree. It can't just jump from
the soil to the branch. And no matter which OS's Boot Volume will get
chosen, the choice is made by the few files in the System Partition.
Hmmm... reminds me of the old VMS file system. It pretty much allowed
one to boot into a maximum of 15 different operating systems. It had the
master directory name of [000000] and then the underlying os was
[000000].vms or it could be [000000].unix or something else.
I'm curious as to how win7 structures their os on the hard drive or
other drives in this fashion.
