Partitions

All devices on the Vita are partitioned the same way. Logical block size is 512 bytes and the first logical block is the master block which defines the partition table along with other information. Because of block level encryption, the master block is also encrypted along with everything else and cannot be seen if the device is dumped from an external dumper.

Master Block
The first block (512 bytes) provides a partition table as well as auxiliary information to the block management drivers.

Partition Entries
Each partition entry is 17 bytes long.

Partition ID
The Partition ID uniquely identifies the partition to its function. It is related to SceKernelModulemgr.

Partition Type
The partition type indicates the file system or if there is no file system (for example, in the case of a SLB2 archive).

Partition Flag
Some partitions (specifically  and the boot loaders) have a shadow redundant copy. On update, only the inactive partition is written to and finally the active partition is swapped. For partitions that do not use this feature, this value is ignored.