Hard Drives and MBR

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06-04-2013

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The MBR (Master Boot Record) resides on the first sector of the disk and is where control is passed to by the machine BIOS.

The MBR will be different from operating system to operating system, and each operating system will have a way of writing its own MBR.

For example, in Windows

Code:

 
fdisk /mbr

(google that for syntax) will write an MBR and on Solaris the

Code:

 
installboot

command will write an MBR.

If an MBR exists at all when the disk comes from the factory, that will just be from the manufacturing test process and probably won't be what you need for your O/S. When the O/S install routine runs it will install its MBR.

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acorn-fdisk

FDISK(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						  FDISK(8)

NAME

     acorn-fdisk -- partition editor for Acorn/RISC OS machines

SYNOPSIS

     acorn-fdisk -h | --help | -v | --version

     acorn-fdisk [-t scheme | --type scheme] -l | --list [device ...]

     acorn-fdisk [-t scheme | --type scheme] -s | --size partition

     acorn-fdisk [-t scheme | --type scheme] [device]

DESCRIPTION

     The acorn-fdisk utility allows one to display or interactively edit partition tables for Acorn/RISC OS machines in various formats.  Using
     the PC/BIOS format, standard IBM PC (i386) partition tables can also be accessed.	When no optional device is given, it defaults to /dev/hda
     or /dev/sda.

     The options are as follows:

     -h | --help  Display a short usage and exit immediately.

     -l | --list  Display the partition table(s) of all devices.

     -s | --size  Display the size of partition.

     -t | --type  Select the partitioning scheme to use.  Valid schemes are:

		  EESOX 	   Eesox SCSI on the Acorn machines.

		  ICSIDEFS	   ICS IDE.

		  Filecore/Linux   Linux on Filecore.  This uses the non-ADFS descriptor to point to the start of the disc to be partitioned.  The
				   first two sectors contain a partition table to identify the Linux partitions contained within.

		  PC/BIOS	   PC/BIOS partitioning scheme.  This consists of a partition table in the first sector of the disk which contains
				   both CHS and LBA values for the partitions.	There can be up to four entries in the primary partition table.
				   One of these can be an extended partition containing up to four extra partitions.

		  PowerTec	   PowerTec SCSI on the Acorn machines.

		  Filecore/RISCiX  RiscIX on Filecore.

     -v | --version
		  Display the version of acorn-fdisk and exit immediately.

     If neither -l | --list or -s | --size are given, the partition table of the given device will be edited interactively.

EXAMPLES

     Display the default device's partition table on a PC:

	   acorn-fdisk --type PC/BIOS -l

     Display the PC partition table of /dev/sda:

	   acorn-fdisk --type PC/BIOS --list /dev/sda

     Display the size in blocks of the partition /dev/sda1:

	   acorn-fdisk --type PC/BIOS --size /dev/sda1

     Edit the MBR partition table interactively:

	   acorn-fdisk --type PC/BIOS

     Display the partition table of an MBR backed up to a file:

	   acorn-fdisk -t PC/BIOS -l mbrdump.bin

     Display the size of the first partition on a device where the MBR would be restored from the backup file mbrdump.bin:

	   acorn-fdisk -t PC/BIOS -s mbrdump.bin1

AUTHORS

     arm-fdisk was written by Russell King <rmk@arm.uk.linux.org> based on util-linux fdisk, which was written at least partially by
     A. V. Le Blanc <LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk>.

     This manual page was written for the Debian system by
     Thorsten Glaser <tg@debian.org> but may be used by others.

BSD
								  October 2, 2010							       BSD

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