Re-establishing boot process from MBR

[Wolfgang Messingschlager]

randhir phagura wrote:
> Wolfgang wrote on Sat, 20 Sep 2008
> 
>> Hi Randhir
> 
>> very interesting info. But if you install often or sometimes Windows I 
>> prefer to create the partitions on Linux and then save the MBR in a file 
>> with the dd command e.g.
>  
>> TS=`date +%Y%m%d`
>> dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/mbr_$TS bs=512 count=1
>  
>> This can be done on a regular basis e.g. as a cron job.
>  
>> Then you can easily restore your MBR with dd as well e.g.
>  
>> dd if=/boot/mbr_... of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
>  
>  
>> Wolfgang
> 
> Hi Wolfgang,
> 
> That is a smart one. It can, probably, be done from within a linux system after it boots. But once the MBR is gone, booting into linux is not possible.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Randhir Phagura
> 
> 
[...]

Hi Randhir,


that is correct that you cannot boot if the MBR is gone or corrupt. But 
in this case you need only a bootable medium e.g. LFS live CD/DVD and 
then you can repair the MBR with dd command.

Another alternative is if you have a discete drive to write the MBR to a 
discete with dd.


Wolfgang