MBR

Generated by scripts/gen-format-pages.py from docs/data/format-metadata/, FILE_FORMATS.csv and docs/formats-master.csv. Do not edit by hand: change the source, then run the script.

MBR Boot Sector Preview.

At a glance


Purpose	A master boot record: boot code, a disk signature and a table of four primary partitions.
Extensions	`.mbr`
Poka parser	`poka-mbr`
Viewer	`poka-tree-viewer`
Depth tier	Parser with a shared viewer (see Depth tiers)
Breadth tier	B4 Summary (see Breadth tiers)

How much Poka reads

B4 Summary. The container and metadata are read and summarised (counts, properties, structure), but the main content is not rendered.

Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-26: read parsers/poka-mbr/src/main.rs (318 lines) and plugin.json. No unit tests or tests/samples.rs; the corpus has mbrman_disk2.mbr, read by no test. Covers .mbr and .bootsector. The tree reads sector 0: the boot signature, disk signature, copy-protect flag and scheme, and the four partition entries with status, type, start and end LBA, sector count and CHS addresses. Judgement: B4: the partition table is decoded in full, but no partition's contents are read.

What Poka does not read

Extended and logical partitions (the EBR chain) are not followed
Partition contents are not read
The boot code is not identified or disassembled
A GPT behind a protective MBR is not read here (the .gpt module does that)

Libraries

Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.

mbr (candidate; MIT; Rust; https://github.com/kallisti5/mbr)
gpt (candidate; MIT; Rust; https://github.com/Quyzi/gpt) — GPT counterpart

Sources

parsers/poka-mbr/src/main.rs
parsers/poka-mbr/plugin.json