UNIX / Linux: copy master boot record (MBR)
Posted by Vivek Gite
[Last updated: September 20, 2007]
Q. How do I copy MBR from one hard disk to another hard disk under Debian Linux? I need to do this because of RAID 1 configuration.
A. To copy MBR simply use dd command. dd command works under all Linux distros and other UNIX like oses.
dd command to copy MBR
Type dd command as follows:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
Above command will copy 512 bytes (MBR) from sda to sdb disk.
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Tags: dd_command, hard_disk, mbr, raid_1, UNIX
December 21st, 2007 at 10:02 pm
This is correct for EXACTLY the same partition sizes. In the case you want the MBR only on a drive that has a root partition of a different size then issue the same command with a smaller block size.
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1
Thus preserving the partitioning schema.