Close look at the Master Boot Record

Hi,

You want to have a close look at the MBR (Master Boot Record) of your Harddisk or USB stick ?

1. Launch "GParted"
2. Start "Terminal" (Desktop icon)
3. Find partitioned devices ( type at the console prompt )

  fdisk -l -u

4. Supposing your HDD is hda (hda1 is its first partition), type

dd if=/dev/hda of=/root/mbr_hda.bin bs=512 count=1

[RETURN]  (writes MBR to a file in "/root")
5. Start "Midnight Commander"

mc /root

6. Select "mbr_hda.bin" with arrow keys (sorry, mouse isn't working !)
7. Start Viewer, select hexadecimal view
[F3](VIEW)
[F4](HEX)

exit with [F3]/[F10](QUIT)

Window width should be 80 for proper view (Resizing window on lower right corner, shows value).

If you use hda1 instead, you get a look at the VBR/PBR (Volume/Partition Boot Record). If you export boot records to a read/write mounted device, you can store them for safety reasons. It is also a good idea to do "fdisk -l -u > /root/part_data.fdisk" and store it as well.

As you might guess, changing and writing a boot record back is also possible with these few commands and programs, but it is better to let "Gparted" do that job for you, unless you don't exactly know, what happens.

cmdr