Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:13:09 +0100 From: Philip Nienhuis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] Serious boot problem - Help needed!
"Fisher, Dave (IBM)" wrote: : <snip> : > In regards to preventing this kind of thing in future, is anyone aware of a > utility to back up things like MBRs and partition tables alone? An MBR _is_ the (primary) partition table. But read on. > I've had problems with my Libretto recently, I think due to a buggy FS > driver on Linux, and I've lost a number of partitions when the machine shuts > down unexpectedly (aka crashes)... I'd say a good partition manager should be able to do so. I once use a tiny boot manager called Boot Control, which offered this option. http://www.xs4all.nl/~gklein/bcpage.html (I used this so often on so many hard disks that I now have tens of MBRs lying around, and I wouldn't know which ones belong to which hard disk and what hard disk partition stage. Oh well....) But! this will just save the "primary" MBR, which contains info on the primary partitions only (the extended partition is a primary partition too). I wouldn't know of any tool to save the chain of MBRs which define(s) the logical partitions, which chain is scattered around the extended partition. I usually make a dump of Linux fdisk output; often just restoring the cylinder numbers will do, provided boot sectors, FATs and other vital stuff have not been fubarred. Nor do I know of any tool to backup other vital but obscure info following the MBR on the first cylinder. E.g., - Disk manager code & info (EZ-drive) - Win2K volume information - Linux boot manager code - OS/2 or ECS volume information (LVM) - third party boot manager code - copy protection scheme code and counters - ...(viruses) - .... etc (Unlike many people seem to think, the first 7.8 MB cylinder is not just entirely wasted on one 512-byte MBR. Indeed it is teeming with wildlife, mostly undocumented, by no means standardized, sometimes overwriting each other....) So, Dave, to expand upon you original question: anyone got suggestions for tools which can completely backup this stuff too (logical partition chain, volume info, ....)? Philip ************************************************************** http://libretto.basiclink.com - Libretto mailing list http://www.silverace.com/libretto/ - Archives -------TO UNSUBSCRIBE------- Reply to any of the list messages. The reply mail should be addressed to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Then replace any text on the message's subject line: cmd:unsubscribe --------TO UNSUBSCRIBE DIGEST------ Do above but with this on subject line: cmd:unsubscribe digest **************************************************************
