MBR Backup 2.0 Released - Allows you to restore MBR

A new version of MBR Backup has been released. This new version allows you to restore saved backups in the event that your MBR becomes corrupted. (This will need to be done by connecting the drive to another computer.)

Another handy feature is the ability to view the partition which is table contained in the MBR. This new version will also show the MBR on any drive connected to the computer.

Download:
http://www.misec.net/products/MBRBackup.exe

 

Thanks again! This makes it a complete tool for emergencies.

 

Thanks Magnus Mischel for updated version. Nice to see MBR restore feature. Does it restore MBR only or MBR + Partition Table?

 

Added this to my UBCD4Win,very nice.

 

Kudos!

Many Thanks for this very small but immensely HUGE! backup MBR tool. IMHO an absolute must! The MBR is a critical componant that when disturbed can make for all sorts of headaches and confusion if not duplicated, replicated, or otherwise saved in it's original format.

Again TY 4 a cool tool

EASTER

 

Partition table resides inside the mbr, so yes restoring the mbr restores your partition table too.

Panagiotis

 

@Mischel

Very nice tool.
Do you think you can add a feature to clear mbr too (write zeros)?

And if possible the ability to backup/restore/clear track0 (first 63 sectors)?

Panagiotis

 

Excellent tool, thanks!

One suggestion: Please add extra info to the drive selection box (e.g. size and model) to make it easier to match labels such as \\.\PhysicalDrive3 with the actual devices (especially when you have multiple external hard drives connected to the computer).

 

Again I will display my ignorance and ask what may be a dumb question.......Why would you need to connect the PC to a 2nd computer in order to restore the MBR? Also, exactly how would this be done?

The ans to the first question is probably because thats the only way you could boot the PC with MBR problems I suspect. Is this correct?

Once the affected PC is connected to a 2nd PC is the process simply a matter of following directions from within your program or would I need to actually know what I was doing?

 

I don't think you need a second PC, just an emergency boot disk such as BartPE or UBCD to boot the computer with a scrambled master boot record. As for restoring the MBR, I haven't tried it with this tool, but you can test it easily by connecting one or more storage devices to your computer, making backups of their MBRs, then try to restore one of the MBRs. Assuming the program works as advertised, I guess the only risk is that you might by mistake restore a MBR to the wrong hard drive.

 

the following is from the OP

 

If your MBR is damaged you wouldn't be able to boot normally and would likely need to connect the drive to another computer. Of course, if you had a bootable CD with MBR Backup and a copy of your MBR that could work as well.

 

Understood, thank you

 

warning: I'm getting bad results with this program. When I try to restore an mbr backup to drive 1 it restores it to drive 0 instead thereby failing to fix drive 1 and corrupting drive 0 to boot.

The first time this happened I had tried to restore an mbr to a flash drive (drive 1) while in Windows, but instead it replaced my laptop's hard drive (drive 0) mbr with the flash drive mbr backup, which I realized when Windows failed to load on the next reboot. Initially I thought it had been my mistake, but today I replicated the problem on a VM with two hard drives; a 6 GB pre-allocated IDE hard disk for data, backups, etc. (drive 0) and an 8 GB SCSI hard disk with Windows XP (drive 1). I made mbr backups of both drives, then used MbrFix to "restore" drive 0's mbr backup to drive 1 to simulate an mbr corruption problem on the boot drive. As expected the VM failed to boot afterward. I then booted it using a BartPE recovery disk and ran mbr backup 2.0 from it to restore drive 1's correct mbr (I checked drive info, sizes, etc. to verify that the drive numbers had not changed). As before, MBR Backup 2.0 restored the backup to the wrong drive so that when I rebooted to BartPE both VM drives were now inaccessible. I then used MbrFix to restore the respective mbr backups to drives 0 and 1, and that worked fine. I'm deleting MBR Backup 2.0 from my system because it's dangerous...

 

Hi,

Could you consider saving not only the MBR but also the 1st cylinder, which may contain useful data also.