backing up the MBR

On Fri, 2003-08-22 at 18:14, anthony hologounis wrote:
> I need to reinstall windwos 2000 on hda1.
>
> My Linux stuff is on hdb and I use grub as the boot loader.
>
> I am thinking all I need to do is backup my MBR, perhaps with dd. dd
> if=/dev/hda of=saved-mbr.bin count=1 bs=512
>
> Reinstall win2k onto hda1 and then recover the saved-mbr.bin. Reboot and
> ? it all works? right?
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seems to me that you can boot an 'emergency boot disk' with linux and
run grub-install to put the grub back into the mbr - your idea seems ok
to me but I have never done it and don't know the length of the mbr to
trust your idea

Craig