Hard Disk partition "Healthy {active)" designation

[robroy6]

When examining Computer Management - Disk Management I see for each Partition under the STATUS column:
Healthy or Healthy (System) or Healthy (Page Files) or Healthy (Active)
What does Active mean for a partition?
I have 14 partitions on 12 HDDs (3 internal,9 USB external)
XP Pro SP3
Thanks

 

[rclarke250]

Active partitions can be used as a boot partition. If the bios sees this flag, it will look for a boot record, if it finds one, it will attempt to boot from it, if not, it goes to the next in the list. Back in the days of DOS, after partitioning the drive, you had to "Mark as Active" usually before format, and then you could place a bootable OS on that partition.