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Fix MBR without data loss

K

kaborka

Senior member
I have a SATA disk pulled from one machine that is already partitioned and full of data. It was never used as a boot drive, just added to the existing setup and partitioned. Now I want to put the drive in another machine and install Windows in the first partition. The WinXP CD goes through the installation process, but when it's time to boot off the hdd, it will not boot. The boot settings in the BIOS are correct, verified by booting off a different drive.

I was going to run FIXMBR from the Recovery Console, but it warned me about data loss. I need to preserve the existing data on the disk. Is there a way to make the disk bootable without loss of data?
 
fixmbr may work. Have you tried the fixboot command?

I would back up data before running fixmbr as I have seen it mess up a disc so that I had to run recovery software on it to get data back.
 
Didn't run Fixboot, since the WinXP setup would've written the boot sector of the active partition. The disk is missing the boot code in the first sector, before the data partitions. That's what Fixmbr is supposed to fix. From what you say, I can't count on it not to trash the data in the partitions. Does anyone else have suggestions?

In the old days when I had the DOS version of Norton Disk Doctor, NDD had a command to "Make disk bootable" -- I'm looking for an equivalent of that, preferably without having to buy 3rd party s/w. I also have Partition Magic, but it doesn't seem to have a command to do this.
 
How about you attach that drive to another computer, backup whatever data that is on there, then attempt to repair it. Otherwise, format and reinstall and just put the data back onto the drive.
 
I've done the backup, but I was just hoping someone knew how to make the MBR bootable without damaging the existing partition table. Unless I get some other input, I'll use Fixmbr and restore the data if it trashes the disk.
 
Update: I installed Windows Vista Beta 1 in the first partition on this disk, and it fixed the MBR itself during the process. The disk booted up fine after the restart. No messages about MBR problems, and the existing data in the other partitions is just fine. So, I've no idea if Fdisk /mbr or the XP FIXMBR command would have hurt the disk or not.
 
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