That's a different situation than what I was describing as BootMagic lives
on it's own small partition and, as I recall, rewrites the MBR on the OS
boot partition and I can see where this could create an issue with Drive
Image. Even if that's not exactly the case, I've run into issues of
restoring images when I've also used Boot Magic and ended up having to use
either the Drive Image emergency disks or the BootMagic emergency disks in
order to set things right again.

--
Michael Solomon MS-MVP
Windows Shell/User
Backup is a PC User's Best Friend
DTS-L.Org: http://www.dts-l.org/

"*Vanguard*"
wrote in message ...
Michael Solomon (MS-MVP Windows Shell/User) said in
:
I need to understand what you've stated as I have Drive Image 2002 as
well.

If Drive Image 2002 doesn't include the contents of the MBR, would
that not make image restoration useless as it would not produce a
bootable drive? Since I've used Drive Image 2002 through several
betas wherein I deleted my system partition and restored the image
created with Drive Image and had a bootable system upon completion of
the restore process, I'd like to know how that is possible. In fact,
as a part of the DI 2002 restore routine, you must first delete the
partition.

As an example, at one time I used to use BootMagic to multiboot between
Windows 98 and Windows NT4 (later replaced with a fresh install of
Windows 2000). When I restored the disk image saved onto CD-R on a new
hard drive, I had problems. Don't remember if it was because the MBR
had not yet been written or if because it was the standard bootstrap
code. In any case, the replacement MBR bootstrap code from BootMagic
was not there. However, as part of using BootMagic, it lets you create
a recovery floppy where it stores the old MBR (which wasn't really
useful). What you do to recover is use FDISK to make the partition
active that contains the install of BootMagic (which requires
installation on a non-NTFS partition) where you can run it to again
replace the standard MBR bootstrap program with BootMagic's. If I had
use mbrutil to save the MBR along with my image fileset then I could've
booted using a DOS-bootable floppy and ran mbrutil from there to restore
a saved copy of the MBR that previously contained the BootMagic
bootstrap program. Because BootMagic installs only in a non-NTFS
partition (mine was FAT32 for the Windows 98 partition), and because I
could use FDISK to make that partition active to run BootMagic from
there to rewrite the MBR bootstrap code, or by using BootMagic's rescue
diskette, I was able to get the MBR back the way it was. I don't
remember if I had to run FDISK /MBR at that time but suspect that I did
to start the boot process (to get the FAT32 partition booted).

FDISK /MBR or FIXMBR usually work okay or well enough to get you started
along the path to recovery, but it can cause problems. If you are
infected with a boot sector virus, it may move the partition tables
within the MBR area. FDISK /MBR and FIXMBR only know how to overwrite
the 460-byte bootstrap code area of the MBR and where to expect the
partition table to begin, so if the partition table got moved then the
standard bootstrap code won't know where to find the partition table.
So using FDISK /MBR or FIXMBR is not always a fix for what ails ya.

But there is also a danger in backing up the MBR. This backup probably
includes all of sector 0 instead of just the first 460 bytes for the
bootstrap code. That means the backup includes a copy of your partition
table at that time. If you later resize, move, or otherwise change your
partitions, the copy saved in your backup copy of the MBR won't be
correct anymore. So you restoring the MBR will overwrite the partition
table which will probably result in none of your partitions being
accessible anymore. The mbrutil from Powerquest appears to save all of
sector 0 in an MBR backup (and obviously all of sector 0 in a track 0
backup). The only option I see is to let it restore ALL of sector 0 (or
track 0). So you really don't want to just do an MBR backup when you
create disk (er, partition) images but you want to maintain a separate
MBR backup floppy where you save the MBR anytime you have something
usurp the bootstrap code OR change your partition table.

I think the MBRtool lets you write only to the bootstrap code area of
the MBR but I also think it only writes the standard bootstrap code and
not the bootstrap code from your backup copy of the MBR. Admittedly I
am not familiar with MBRtool (got it but haven't used it yet) so one of
its many options or features described at
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuur...ool_manual.htm might
actually let you restore just the first 460 bytes of the MBR in order to
restore just the original bootstrap program. I just use Powerquest's
mbrutil anytime something overwrites the bootstrap code (like a disk
overlay manager, Goback, multiboot managers, security products, etc.) or
when the partition table changes (resize, move, delete, add, or
whatever). Since you can filename for the backup output, you can save
multiple copies and give a descriptive name to clue you in as to what
was different about the MBR and why you backed it up, or put it into its
own folder and add a descriptive .txt file.