Re: [TCLUG:18079] clobbered partition table

[Ben Lutgens <blutgens@usinternet.com>]

On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 11:03:13AM -0500, David S. Cargo wrote:
>
>I had prepared to do an fdisk /mbr, but this proved to be unnecessary.

This is because the /mbr switch tells fdisk to overwrite the master boot
recodr of the drive with the default stuff (i.e. look for a windows OS on
such-and-such inode)

You can actually rewrite your partition table without destrying your data as
long as you don't change the geometry of the table. Say for example you had
lilo installed on the mbr of /dev/hda but your linux / partition was /dev/hda2
and you had windoze on /dev/hda1. Everytime you had to install doze (weekly?
LOL) you would rewrite said mbr with doze's information. Thus having to boot
with a rescue disk or some such and rerun lilo. 

If you fire up fdisk (in linux preferably) and toggle the bootable flag for
/dev/hda2, write the table then edit lilo conf to install lilo into the mbr of
/dev/hda2 you can reinstall doze all day long without ever overwriting lilo.

One of the nuggets of info I picked up at the installfest :-)

-- 
Ben Lutgens  xAdministrator CS Solutions Inc |WinNT BSOD Security model:
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