Re: Boot sectors (was: OK, I need some help on this one...)

Article: 7660 of alt.hackers
From: wsantee@cyberspace.com (Wes Santee)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: Boot sectors (was: OK, I need some help on this one...)
Date: 14 Apr 1995 13:45:27 -0700
Organization: C y b e r S p a c e  (206) 505-5577
Lines: 40
Approved: Peter Norton
Message-ID: 3mmmt7$bba@case.cyberspace.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: case.cyberspace.com
Status: RO

Mikko H. Hypponen sez:
>Wes Santee (wsantee@cyberspace.com) wrote:
>> Acutally, you don't even need that.  NDD will reconstruct the entire
>> boot sector from scratch in software.  All it needs is a valid
>> partition table.
>
>Actually, NDD doesn't usually even need a valid partition table, as
>it is able to recover lost partitions. However, I've found that in
>such situations NDD works best if you first manually zero out the
>whole MBR area (Cyl 0, Head 0, Sec 1) on the first physical hard
>drive.

Heh heh...we could go around in circles for months. :)  Actually...in
order to recreate the boot sector, NDD needs a valid partition table.
If the partition table is bad NDD/REBUILD will look at the drive
dimensions and scan the disk for signs of a partition (FAT signatures,
valid boot sectors, etc).  After the partition table is reconstructed,
it will then rebuild the boot sector.  How's that for some useless
info. :)

>Sort-of obligatory hack: Putting too much files and directories to a
>single 250MB DOS FAT partition. Now Norton Backup, Central Point Backup,
>MS Backup, FastBack, ZIP or ARJ won't back it up anymore. Any
>hints, anyone?

What do you mean 'wont back it up anymore'.  Do you get an error?
Does the backup complete but the mackup medium is no good anymore?  It
is too many files in a particular directory as opposed to too many
files on the disk total?  There's something to start with... :)

ObLameKidHack: Used to reach up top of the Berserk arcade game as a
kid and flip the 'test' switch.  Got myself plenty a free game before
the arcade owner booted me out. :)

Cheers,
--
( -Wes Santee            | And the sun is the same in a relative way )
( wsantee@cyberspace.com |  but you're older                         )
( O S / 2  W A R P       | Shorter of breath                         )
(                        |  And one day closer to death --Pink Floyd )

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