Basic OS question [Understanding how OS works!] Help
August 25th, 2013
I have been digging a lot of things about how OS works. Everything looks alright. But I’m unable to understand this scenario.
Suppose:
-> If a Hard Drive has a partitions ( say 4)
-> If an OS has been installed on first partition.
When we try to install the second OS, the question comes as How does the second OS is able to read what the other OS has already written?
I was under an assumption that, Bootloader (MBR) does recognize it but looks like I was wrong. (According to my professor).
I would like someone to clearly explain (If possible provide links) to understand how this thing works.
I would really appreciate if someone can enlighten me.
Say you buy a thumb drive. You plug it into your computer, copy some files to it. Now you connect the thumb drive with a different computer. It can see what files are on it, right?
Now you certainly wouldn’t think that the bootloader has anything to do with that, since you can hotplug thumb drives (i.e. connect/disconnect while the PC is running)
Why do you think there is some bootloader magic involved? Why is reading a different partition different from reading “your own” where the OS is installed?