Sponsored Content
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers How to copy MBR from old harddrive to new harddrive? Post 302274152 by drak on Tuesday 6th of January 2009 10:43:28 PM
Old 01-06-2009
Error Stop

I read this and nearly had a heart attack... the instructions given above a PLAIN WRONG and will destroy your partitions and data.

To backup the MBR you

dd if=/dev/sda of=mbrbackup bs=512 count=1

to restore the MBR you want to

dd if=mbrbackup of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1

If you copy more than 446 you will wipe over the partition tables, which is OK if you are copying to the same disk with the same unchanged partitions.

Whoever you are who wrote what you did, you should be ashamed of yourself for leaving such inaccurate and dangerous information out there.

To everyone else, please double check your DD commands before you use them because you can do irreparable damage. If in double google a few different sources to double and triple check.

Drak
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Filesystems, Disks and Memory

Supplemental harddrive.

Am planning on adding a secodary SCSI hardrive to the existing 20gb drive., that I have. The old drive has Linux on it. Once, the new drive is added, I am planning on having windows on it. Firstly, could this be done ? Has anyone build a system with a similar configuration ? What is requried,... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: matvrix
1 Replies

2. Linux

Mount a harddrive in linux.

Hey people i'm very new to linux. I just put a extra 200 gig maxtor HD in my computer. Linux can tell it's there...but it says it cant mount it. How do i mount it manually? thanks, John (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: RKJV
2 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Copying a file to my harddrive

I'm loged on to a unix sever over the internet and i want to copy a file from there to my harddrive. How would i go about this because cp does not seem to work. (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: zoolz
1 Replies

4. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Adding an additional harddrive in solaris 9

Hello, I have a system which a new harddrive was installed for additional space. I now need to mount the drive and transfer data from /home to the new drive with a mount point named /home. How do I go about doing this? Thanks in advance. (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: GLJ@USC
5 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

booting from which harddrive

Hi, both of my /dev/hda and my /dev/hdb contain /boot partition. I'm wondering how to tell which harddrive's /boot is actually being read? Thanks (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: onthetopo
2 Replies

6. Solaris

installing second harddrive

This is my first post i am a solaris newbie. I just purchased my first sun system. It is a sunblade 1000. It had a fcal 36gb hdd in it already so i purchased a secondary 36gb fcal harddrive to increase my harddrive space however, how do i get it to detect the second harddrive? I have tried boot -r... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: crzywut
2 Replies

7. Solaris

Detecting Harddrive Errors

I am looking for some tips or suggestions in how to do the following. 1) From a Solaris server, I run the command iostat -En and receive output that is similiar to the following which shows your disks along with the cdrom/dvdrom: c0t2d0 Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: sunsysadm2003
1 Replies

8. Solaris

Removable External SCSI Harddrive

Hi guys, I have a solaris 9 operating system on a sun solaris machine and one external removable scsi drive connected to it. When i type the following command this is what is displayed: #format AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c0t0d0 <DEFAULT cyl 17832 alt 2 hd 255 sec 63>... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: tlee
6 Replies

9. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Copying the content of a filesystem to different Harddrive

my server runs solaris 10 , one of the partition in my primary harddrive is 99% full , i want to move the contents of it to the second harddrive . what is the best way to move the contents to 2nd drive ? which command should i use cpio/dd/tar/ufsdump .... please guide me with the command and the... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: skamal4u
0 Replies

10. Solaris

Copying the content of a filesystem to different Harddrive

my server runs solaris 10 , one of the partition in my primary harddrive is 99% full , i want to move the contents of it to the second harddrive which has higher capacity. what is the best way to move the contents to 2nd drive ? which command should i use cpio/dd/tar/ufsdump .... please guide me... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: skamal4u
1 Replies
PARTX(8)						       System Administration							  PARTX(8)

NAME
       partx - tell the kernel about the presence and numbering of on-disk partitions

SYNOPSIS
       partx [-a|-d|-P|-r|-s|-u] [-t type] [-n M:N] [-] disk
       partx [-a|-d|-P|-r|-s|-u] [-t type] partition [disk]

DESCRIPTION
       Given a device or disk-image, partx tries to parse the partition table and list its contents.  It can also tell the kernel to add or remove
       partitions from its bookkeeping.

       The disk argument is optional when a partition argument is provided.  To force scanning a partition as if it were a whole disk (for example
       to list nested subpartitions), use the argument "-" (hyphen-minus).  For example:

	      partx --show - /dev/sda3

       This will see sda3 as a whole-disk rather than as a partition.

       partx  is  not  an fdisk program - adding and removing partitions does not change the disk, it just tells the kernel about the presence and
       numbering of on-disk partitions.

OPTIONS
       -a, --add
	      Add the specified partitions, or read the disk and add all partitions.

       -b, --bytes
	      Print the SIZE column in bytes rather than in human-readable format.

       -d, --delete
	      Delete the specified partitions or all partitions.

       -g, --noheadings
	      Do not print a header line with --show or --raw.

       -l, --list
	      List the partitions.  Note that all numbers are in 512-byte sectors.  This output format is DEPRECATED in favour of --show.  Do  not
	      use it in newly written scripts.

       -n, --nr M:N
	      Specify  the range of partitions.  For backward compatibility also the format M-N is supported.  The range may contain negative num-
	      bers, for example --nr -1:-1 means the last partition, and --nr -2:-1 means the last two partitions.  Supported range specifications
	      are:

		     M	    Specifies just one partition (e.g. --nr 3).

		     M:     Specifies the lower limit only (e.g. --nr 2:).

		     :N     Specifies the upper limit only (e.g. --nr :4).

		     M:N    Specifies the lower and upper limits (e.g. --nr 2:4).

       -o, --output list
	      Define the output columns to use for --show, --pairs and --raw output.  If no output arrangement is specified, then a default set is
	      used.  Use --help to get list of all supported columns.  This option cannot be combined with the --add, --delete, --update or --list
	      options.

       -P, --pairs
	      List the partitions using the KEY="value" format.

       -r, --raw
	      List the partitions using the raw output format.

       -s, --show
	      List  the partitions.  The output columns can be selected and rearranged with the --output option.  All numbers (except SIZE) are in
	      512-byte sectors.

       -t, --type type
	      Specify the partition table type.

       --list-types
	      List supported partition types and exit.

       -u, --update
	      Update the specified partitions.

       -S, --sector-size size
	      Overwrite default sector size.

       -v, --verbose
	      Verbose mode.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information and exit.

       -h, --help
	      Display help text and exit.

EXAMPLES
       partx --show /dev/sdb3
       partx --show --nr 3 /dev/sdb
       partx --show /dev/sdb3 /dev/sdb
	      All three commands list partition 3 of /dev/sdb.

       partx --show - /dev/sdb3
	      Lists all subpartitions on /dev/sdb3 (the device is used as whole-disk).

       partx -o START -g --nr 5 /dev/sdb
	      Prints the start sector of partition 5 on /dev/sdb without header.

       partx -o SECTORS,SIZE /dev/sda5 /dev/sda
	      Lists the length in sectors and human-readable size of partition 5 on /dev/sda.

       partx --add --nr 3:5 /dev/sdd
	      Adds all available partitions from 3 to 5 (inclusive) on /dev/sdd.

       partx -d --nr :-1 /dev/sdd
	      Removes the last partition on /dev/sdd.

SEE ALSO
       addpart(8), delpart(8), fdisk(8), parted(8), partprobe(8)

AUTHORS
       Davidlohr Bueso <dave@gnu.org>
       Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>

       The original version was written by Andries E. Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>.

ENVIRONMENT
       LIBBLKID_DEBUG=all
	      enables libblkid debug output.

AVAILABILITY
       The partx command is part of the util-linux package and is available  from  Linux  Kernel  Archive  <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils
       /util-linux/>.

util-linux							   December 2014							  PARTX(8)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:20 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy