Re: copying an mbr

[Aaron Konstam <akonstam Trinity Edu>]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 09:08:48PM +0200, Martin Stricker wrote:
> Greg Andrews wrote:
> 
> > I am trying to make a machine that I run a little more robust by
> > doing a backup periodically ( a radical idea I know ).
> > I have tried using dd for this and it appears to work a treat ( in
> > conjuction with cron ) however it does not copy the contents of the
> > mbr. I seem to remember not long ago someone much brighter than me
> > explaining how to install/copy the files required for the mbr from
> > another working drive , and have hunted through my old mail but cant
> > find it.
> 
> The MBR is on /dev/hda, not /dev/hda1, and it's 512 kB in size. So:
> dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bak bs=512 count=1
> I hope memory doesn't fool me...
> 
> Best regards,
The boot portion of the first block on the disk takes up only 446 bytes. The
rest is the partition table. So one has to be carefull if you copy all 512
bytes.
-- 
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
715 Stadium Dr.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: (210)-999-7484
email:akonstam trinity edu