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Contents > Procedures
3.4. Backing Up MBR, Partition Table and Boot Sector
This section contains an extremely brief description of some of the
elements involved in low-level disk structures. Descriptions here do
not cover all common scenarios. Descriptions are provided at a general
knowledge level only.
It is important to make MBR and Partition Table backups regularly.
If a partition becomes damaged and cannot be read by the system,
restoring the MBR may be able to help resolve the situation.
The Master Boot Record (MBR) is usually located on the first
physical sector of a hard disk partition. This is also called the Boot
Sector. It consists of two parts:
- Executable code
- The Partition Table
When the PC begins the boot process, the executable code is run to
determine which partition contains the operating system. Once
determined, it instructs the operating system to take control of all
systems.
Some hard drives use proprietary drive overlay software (e.g.
OnTrack Disk Manager), to handle large drive sizes. When contemplating
rewriting or by-passing the MBR, it is advisable to make a backup copy
to simplify recovery.
To make backups of MBR, Partition Table or Boot
Sector use the
following steps:
- Run Active@ UNERASER for DOS.
- Select the HDD which is to be backed up. Make a note of the name
of the HDD.
- With the Active@ UNERASER floppy disk in drive A:, press
[Ctrl]+[B].
- Information will be saved to drive A: in a folder with the same
name as the selected drive.
For example, if HDD 80h is being backed up, the path to the saving
location will be A:\HDD80h.MBR.
Figure 3-14 MBR Backup
Using this floppy, the system's MBR can be virtually restored and
partitions and drives will be viewable for the files and folders to be recovered.
(!) Note: It is strongly advised to make
MBR and Partition Table
backup every time a change is made to the computer configuration (e.g. adding or
removing HDDs, partitions or logical drives).
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