KR> in the case of losing the boot sector, you will lose your partition

 KR> information, and i have yet to see a recovery from that that doesnt

 KR> destroy all the data on the disk,



 RS> Thats going a bit far. If you know the partition layout you can

 RS> restore it from memory. Trivial if the drive has one partition for

 RS> example. And trial and error is possible in some cases without

 RS> losing data.



 KR> you seem to have missed the point completely,



 RS> Nope.



well thats your opinion, mistaken though it may be.



 KR> i have no doubt that the partition table could be rebuilt, if (big if)

 KR> you happen to know from which to which cylinder each partition on your

 KR> hard disk goes.



 RS> So losing the boot sector isnt always the end of civilisation as we know

 RS> it, even in the extremely unlikely event of a power flick at just the

 RS> crucial instant of execution of an FDISK /MBR. Thats quite a contrast to

 RS> your 'destroy all the data on the disk' above.



if you know the partition layout of your disk, and know the layout of

the contents of the boot sector, you could certainly rebuild. that lets

out 99% of the population, whose only option would be a full fdisk, and

total data loss



 KR> i have no idea what they are on my disks,



 RS> And I specifically said that in some simple cases like one partition per

 RS> physical drive, it may well be quite trivial.



in SOME cases it MAY be trivial, a lot of maybes. you stated that it is

probably more important to back up the cmos as a lot of users dont know

the disk type, if they dont even know their disk type, what hope have

they of rebuilding the partition table.



 KR> but why would you bother when all you need to do is to take a copy

 KR> of the boot sector once only straight after you do the first fdisk

 KR> when you set the system up.



 RS> Pretty simple really, because most people arent sufficiently anal

 RS> retentive to copy the boot sector to a floppy just for an FDISK /MBR,

 RS> even if you are. Obviously you are welcome to even use kinky leather

 RS> gear when doing an FDISK /MBR if you want to, but you were suggesting

 RS> that saving it was the one true path to salvation. It aint. The risk is

 RS> microscopic.



oh shit, rods on the cliches again, same tired old crap, nothing more to

say so throw in a few vague insults, covers up a lack of thought,

and uses up space.



 KR> the boot sector is one thing on your disk that should never change,



 RS> So you claim. Most people dont agree with you, IBM included. You have

 RS> yet to substantiate your assertion with any real evidence of a major

 RS> risk either.



who are these most people? you and who else? since the boot sector

consists of a simple bootstap program, and the partition table why

should it change? obviously award dont agree, since their more recnt

bioses watch for writes to it and complain loudly if they find one.



 KR> so, to my mind, an extra 2 minutes spent when setting up a system

 KR> are well spent even if you never need to use it.



 RS> Well, as I way, you are perfectly entitled to do whatever you like.

 RS> But you didnt jump into this thread to just inform us about your

 RS> funky approach, you were indeed attempting to tell me that I should

 RS> have told Paul about the risk. I dont agree, neither does he. Funny

 RS> that.



what paul said was that he wouldn't have done a backup, his original

message was asking you why you had said it was an inocuous command, the

implication being that he didn't find it so after finding out what was

involved.



 KR> i dont suppose that many people do bother, thats ok, it is the sort

 KR> of thing that brings me extra work.



 RS> I doubt it. The vast majority of people dont do FDISK /MBRs anyway, its

 RS> an undocumented command as you know, and they dont have a need to use it

 RS> anyway, and the risk is utterly microscopic that when one is used, you

 RS> will get a power flick at the time you do one. With that combination of

 RS> unlikelys, I hope you dont plan to live on the income generated.



nope, just from people who dont bother to take precautions in general,

still its good how they'll happily pay through the nose because disaster

hits then go back to the same old attitudes. the anal retentives, of

course dont get into that situation, and live happy lives with lower

stress levels.



 KR> of course you dont do it just to guard against problems with fdisk

 KR> /mbr,



 RS> Which is what I said, that the risk of a problem with losing the cmos

 RS> values is considerably higher and that its not a bad idea to generate

 RS> say a Nortons Rescue disk. Thats an utterly different question to doing

 RS> a precautionary save of the boot sector before executing an FDISK /MBR

 RS> tho. Like I say, very few, even knowledgeable people, consider that worth

 RS> it. You can do whatever you choose.



so you DO agree then rod why didn't you say so long ago and save all the

typing, since a nortons rescue disk contains boot sector backups, it all

comes to the same thing doesn't it?



 KR> not 0.005% of the population ever use it even now that M$ admit to

 KR> it's existence, paul's case is the only one that i have ever come

 KR> across where it has done something useful.



 RS> It happens, usually in that situation, where some fundamental error like

 RS> putting an IDE cable on backwards has been made. Or a virus has

 RS> infected the executable code in it, or a virus checker or fancy boot

 RS> ute has changed it.



 KR> there are plenty of other things that can stuff the boot sector,

 KR> from disk failure to virusses. even then boot sector corruption is

 KR> not common, it is just that it is so easy to guard against and the

 KR> consiquences are so disruptive.



 RS> Well, thats all quite different to you jumping into this thread and

 RS> suggesting a particular danger with FDISK /MBR.



it is one of the things that can bite you, so why not take 2 minutes to

guard against it. what do you have against taking sensible, and easy

precautions? is it just that you didn't suggest it so it must be wrong?



 RS> And the vast bulk of the other boot sector corruption can be fixed

 RS> with an FDISK /MBR, you dont need to have a saved copy of the boot

 RS> sector.



you dont even need to do an fdisk/mbr if you have a good copy of the

boot sector. that will also fix any problems with the partition table

which fdisk /mbr certainly wont.



 KR> at one time, there were cluedos in knowing of it's existance, but

 KR> these days every competent pc user knows about it.



 RS> Crap.



come on rod, we all know that you are the repository of all worthwhile

knowledge about pcs, but there are a lot of other people out there who

know just as much as you, they probably read the same publications as

you, and the fdisk /mbr thing has been quite widely published in all

sorts of pc mags.



                        Keith



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