Recreating or Restoring the MBR

[jwgoerlich]

How do I recreate the MBR, or copy the MBR?

I have two identical hard drives on a Windows 2000 AS SP4 computer. On
the first, I have a boot partition. I have created a partition on the
second drive. The partitions are identical in size, file system
(NTFS), and disk allocation size (Default). These are matching drives
and matching partitions.

Now, I take both hard drives and put them in a second computer. I use
XCOPY with a handful of switches to copy the data from the first to
the second. The data transfer is correct, down to the file count and
relative byte count. I put the second hard drive back into the
original computer. I cannot boot on it, and get a hardware-specific
error that indicates a damaged MBR.

What I need to know is how to recreate or copy the MBR from one disk
to another. There are a couple caveats, namely money and time. Given
budget constraints, I must use freely available utilities, or those
that come with Windows 2000 S/AS. Also, I need to get this done in the
least amount of time possible. I have several servers to perform this
disk swap on, and so a time savings of mere minutes quickly adds up.

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks in advance,

J Wolfgang Goerlich

Post script: In case it matters, these are not actual hard drives. I
am migrating servers from one SAN to another. Thus, these are either
vdisks or storage volumes, depending on your brand of SAN. -- jwg.

 

[DL]

I dont believe xcopy will copy the o/s, you need a third party app eg Ghost
The MBR can be repaired using Win2k inst.disk

 

[jwgoerlich]

Thank you for the response.

I dont believe xcopy will copy the o/s, you need a third party app eg Ghost

I have used XCOPY before to copy the OS, with success. The only caveat
was that the drive I am copying to had to have Windows 2000 installed
previously. This procedure insures that the MBR and boot record are
setup properly.

The MBR can be repaired using Win2k inst.disk

Do you mean with Fixboot or Fixmbr from the Recovery Console? If not,
please let me know. This might be the ticket.

Some additional information: the second drive, the destination, is a
dynamic partition. Fixboot cannot read its MBR to set the boot record.
It gives an error when I execute it. Fixmbr completes successfully but
you still cannot boot.

J Wolfgang Goerlich

 

[DL]

The last time I had a similar problem I used FixBoot
Fixboot writes new info whereas fixmbr repairs. In yr circumstance I believe
you need to write new

 

[jwgoerlich]

The last time I had a similar problem I used FixBoot

Good point, and that normally works. However, Fixboot does not work in
my current situation. Any other suggestions?

J Wolfgang Goerlich