MBR

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imanhafezi
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Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 1:24 am

MBR

Post by imanhafezi »

hi, i am a computer engineer i want to create a rescue disk, i have decided to create a c++ program to back up and restore MBR but there are something unclear in my mind. please help me and clear the correct way to me. the big Question is that which makes MBR different? what Is it depend on in different computer? thank you in advanced.
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Brendan
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Re: MBR

Post by Brendan »

Hi,
imanhafezi wrote:hi, i am a computer engineer i want to create a rescue disk, i have decided to create a c++ program to back up and restore MBR but there are something unclear in my mind.
Why just the MBR; and why not the whole "boot manager" area (e.g. all sectors from start of disk to start of first partition), and why not the boot loader/s or individual partitions or the whole disk?
imanhafezi wrote:please help me and clear the correct way to me. the big Question is that which makes MBR different? what Is it depend on in different computer? thank you in advanced.
MBR is the first 512 bytes of the boot manager; and typically contains the (primary) partition table. This means that different people with different boot managers (e.g. GRUB, Windows, whatever) will have different MBRs, and different people with different partitions will have different partition tables.


Cheers,

Brendan
For all things; perfection is, and will always remain, impossible to achieve in practice. However; by striving for perfection we create things that are as perfect as practically possible. Let the pursuit of perfection be our guide.
imanhafezi
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 1:24 am

Re: MBR

Post by imanhafezi »

how can i start?
what should I learn?
pleas give me some resource.
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Brendan
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Re: MBR

Post by Brendan »

Hi,
imanhafezi wrote:how can i start?
what should I learn?
pleas give me some resource.
Start by deciding exactly what this utility will do - will you have 2 separate utilities where one only creates a backup of the MBR and the other only restores the MBR (where if anything goes wrong it just blows up in the user's face); or will you have extensive detection and checking and error reporting to make sure things don't go wrong; or will it be an "all in one" utility with some sort of user interface that the user can use to select whether to backup or restore; and will it support multiple options (MBR only, whole partition, whole disk) possibly with support for GPT too; and what other features will it have (backup/restore from a remote server, encryption/decryption, compression)?

Next determine what it will run on top of - will it run on top of Windows or Linux or something, or on top of "bare metal"?

Once you've decided that, you'll be able to decide how it will work. For example, if it runs on "bare metal" will you use BIOS functions for disk IO or write 50 different storage device drivers? What will you use the for user interface (if any)?

After making all of those decisions you'll probably need to do research, etc to determine what you'd need to know. From there you can subtract what you already know from the list, to determine what you should learn.


Cheers,

Brendan
For all things; perfection is, and will always remain, impossible to achieve in practice. However; by striving for perfection we create things that are as perfect as practically possible. Let the pursuit of perfection be our guide.
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