HowTo Backup And Restore The Master Boot Record (MBR)

This HowTo shows how to use the dd utility to backup and restore the Master Boot Record (MBR).

• Note: This HowTo assumes that the MBR to backup and restore is located on disk: "sda".

• Backup the MBR on disk: "sda" to file: "/var/nst/backup/mbrbackup"

[root@probe ~]# mkdir -p /var/nst/backup

[root@probe ~]# dd if=/dev/sda of=/var/nst/backup/mbrbackup bs=512 count=1

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 5.6701e-05 s, 9.0 MB/s
[root@probe ~]#

• Restore the MBR from file: "/var/nst/backup/mbrbackup" on to disk: "sda"

[root@probe ~]# dd if=/var/nst/backup/mbrbackup of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 4.6066e-05 s, 11.1 MB/s
[root@probe ~]#

It is a good idea to save the backed up MBR file to removable storage like a USB flash drive.