Backup and Restore MBR

[Les]

On Mon, 2006-12-11 at 05:10 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
> Charles Curley wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 09:18:09AM -0600, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> > 
> >>On Sun, 2006-12-10 at 07:01 +0530, Vivek J. Patankar wrote:
> >>
> >>>On 12/10/06, Hadders <fedora at workingwithit.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>I'm going to install Vista (dual-boot) and was wondering if it was easy
> >>>>to just back it up rather than running grub?
> >>>
> >>># dd if=/dev/hda of=/path/filename bs=512 count=1
> >>
> >>No, No, NO. The MBR is only the first 446 bytes of block 0. The rest is
> >>the partition table. I assume you don't want to rewrite the partition
> >>table.
> > 
> > 
> > Quite. So you save the partition table separately:
> 
> No. The PT is a part of the MBR, which should be saved
> as a whole. If one later decides not to replace the PT
> portion of them MBR when "undoing" an operation, that
> decision should be made then, not when doing the save.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Mike
> -- 
> p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
> This message made from 100% recycled bits.
> You have found the bank of Larn.
> I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
> I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
> 
Hi, Mike,
   It has been decades since I looked at the disk structure.  I am
curious about the current "state of the art".  Can you recommend some
(heavy?) reading?

Regards,
Les H