Questions tagged [mbr]

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30 votes
3 answers
99k views

How do I convert my linux disk from MBR to GPT with UEFI?

I have a linux box (Ubuntu 16.04) whose boot disk is partitioned using MBR. How can I convert it to GPT+UEFI?
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

how to backup partition layout?

How I can backup(and restore) partition layout of the Disk along with file system types,UUIDs,labels,LVM partitions(Linux LVM) etc, plus with MBRs and VBRs etc but without actual files I want to ...
0 votes
0 answers
69 views

Copy boot disk to backup drive using recovery mode or live cd

I am trying to make a backup of my 1TB boot drive without physically removing the drive or adding more drives. I have a 5TB drive installed that has enough space in one of its partitions to store a ...
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

What are the steps to convert an EBS boot volume from MBR to GPT without data loss? (Using Ubuntu)

I would like to extend one of my Ubuntu servers main/boot drive beyond 2TB. I know that I need to convert the drive to use GPT, and I'm confident that I can extend the size as needed once I'm able to ...
1 vote
4 answers
4k views

HP Microserver boot issues

I recently installed Ubuntu onto an SSD in a Gen8 HP Microserver. It worked perfectly fine for a few weeks, but now it won't boot. Randomly one day it started refusing to boot, giving an error along ...
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

Increased AWS EBS to more than 2TB and found out MBR is limited to 2TB

we just ran almost out of space on our main EC2 instance. I wanted to increase the EBS volume size to 2.5TB from 2TB. However, I noticed that I could not increase the partition anymore due to the MBR ...
12 votes
2 answers
59k views

Bootrec /FIXBOOT vs Bootrec /FIXMBR

According to Microsoft here is what Bootrec /FIXBOOT does: "This option writes a new boot sector to the system partition by using a boot sector that's compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7" And ...
0 votes
1 answer
199 views

Root disk mbr and non-root gpt

I have an ec2 instance on aws running linux, with a root volume and another volume for data. Both are ext4. I need to increase the data volume size to more than 2 TB. However currently the ...
1 vote
0 answers
778 views

Resize an OS disk that has a MBR partition - azure linux vm

We have a managed OS disk attached to a Linux VM (Ubuntu) that have 64 GB in size, and it's using MBR partition table with azure vm generation 1, now we want to expand the disk space to 128 GB ! From ...
-1 votes
2 answers
163 views

Why do Cloud providers use MBR and BIOS?

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Full/Installation#Master_boot_record_.28MBR.29_or_DOS_boot_sector While installing Gentoo, I came across a segment talking about GPT and UEFI being the more ...
1 vote
0 answers
162 views

Converting sgdisk to sfdisk for old machine with MBR

I want to put ZFS on an old machine, however it apparently fails to boot with GPT. So I wanted to convert this script, mainly these 3 lines to sfdisk, which uses MBR. https://github.com/terem42/zfs-...
1 vote
1 answer
223 views

Is there any kind of complete RFC document for MBR (master boot record) format - better with explanations? [closed]

I am designing the code enumerating the partitions in the system. Reading numerous documents I can not devise complete and definite list of constraints for the algorithm, and find out why constraints ...
0 votes
2 answers
812 views

How to clone PMBR disk with bad sectors?

I'm trying to clone 1TB disk with PMBR partition and bad sectors. Which has working Windows partitions on it, and is bootable via MBR. blkid doesn't recognize partitions /dev/sdc: PTTYPE="PMBR&...
2 votes
0 answers
241 views

How to convert LVM on MDADM RAID1 on two MBR partitioned drives to GPT without data loss

I have an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server with two 3TB Fujitsu SATA disks with MBR partition tables. Output from fdisk -l and lsblk is shown below : sudo fdisk -l /dev/sd[ab] Disk /dev/sda: 2,7 TiB, ...
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

External HDD wrong size

I have an very interesting problem with a Seagate HDD (3TB): Under Windows the HDD has a size of ~3TB. When I connect it to Ubuntu 14.04 and try to format it with GParted, GParted tells me that the ...
1 vote
1 answer
296 views

Make use of increased storage space on MBR OS disk on Centos 7.3 in Azure

(I'm quite new to disk management and partitions, so some terminology might be mixed and confused) I'm attempting to increase the size of the OS disk on our Centos 7.3 VM on Azure in order to (...
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

Convert MBR linux disk to GPT to run Windows 10

I'm in a situation where I want to reformat my main SSD hard drive (500GB) to run Windows 10. Currently it is running linux (ubuntu). I have a bootable Windows 10 install USB, however when I try to ...
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why I cant read/mount on macosx external disk formatted extfat?

I have connected via USB this SATA disk previously mounted on a Linux system in a RAID 1 HW configuration: I have installed ext4fuse to mount the FS. First of all I checked the drive with: ...
24 votes
4 answers
15k views

Why are there only four primary partitions on an MBR disk?

I'm reading the docs over at CentOS.org. In section 25.1.2. Partitions: Turning One Drive Into Many, there is the following statement: The partition table is divided into four sections or four ...
1 vote
1 answer
1k views

How to recover data - from Software RAID1 - MBR is lost on both drives

I'm trying to recover raid1 array, both disks are NVMe flash drives. I did really stupid thing in the end of long and bad day - erased first 512 bytes of each NVMe drive - the intention was to ...
1 vote
1 answer
74 views

How can I make old hardware work with new (large) drives?

Good afternoon, I picked up three Dell Poweredge 1950s and 4 SunFire X2200s from my local surplus store with the intention to finally build that cluster I've been thinking about for a few months. ...
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

How to convert MBR to GPT and change from BIOS/legacy boot to UEFI

I am trying to convert a Windows 10 Enterprise VM from BIOS boot to EFI/UEFI. After extensive research I found the built-in "MBR2GPT" tool that MS released with Fall Creators Update: https://docs....
0 votes
1 answer
251 views

Deleted MBR on virtual machine on purpose, but entries are preserved

I'm playing with Master boot record. I decided to delete and restore it on my vmware machine. With Ubuntu LiveCD I'm trying to erase partition entries and signature with command: dd if=/dev/zero of=/...
0 votes
1 answer
147 views

Is it not possible to use 4x1TB disks in RAID5, when booting from the same VD?

I've just got a couple of 2010 Dell servers. One of them has 4x 1TB disks. I configured them in the RAID controller to use all of them in RAID5 to give me 3TB of storage + 1TB for parity. There are no ...
5 votes
2 answers
24k views

Installing GRUB on a VirtualBox guest - does it affect the host MBR?

I am in the process of installing the latest debian stable on VirtualBox (3.1.4), and got to an installation step asking to installing GRUB to the MBR of the disk. I assume that since this is a "...
2 votes
1 answer
4k views

extend MBR disk with ext4 partition to over 2 TB on CentOS 7

I have a CentOS 7 machine with two disks mounted [ /dev/sda and /dev/sdb ] using ext4. I need to extend /dev/sdb1 to over 2 TB. I extended the disk from 2 TB to 2.5 TB (google cloud) After using fdisk ...
2 votes
1 answer
646 views

how to intentionally damage linux MBR (RHEL 7) on disk for test purpose?

I am running tests for MBR recovery on Red Hat Linux 7. I tried to intentionally erase the MBR with: dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda bs=1 count=512 I can see with fdisk -l /dev/sda that the ...
0 votes
3 answers
2k views

BIOS to UEFI no backup restore possible?

We have a DELL R510 server with Windows SBS 2011 (Data, Exchange, ...), we running out of space on the server. We currently have this configuration: 2x 300GB SAS in RAID 1 2x 2TB SATA in RAID 1 We ...
2 votes
4 answers
922 views

Windows 7 update kills boot sector

I have a serious problem with a bunch of computers. They're all equiped with a ASUS P9X79 Pro Mainboard, running Windows 7 Ultimate and refuse to boot starting with one machine yesterday morning and 4 ...
0 votes
2 answers
1k views

Install Windows 7 without modifyting the MBR [closed]

Is there a way to install Windows 7 on a second HDD (SATA for that matter) and have it not modify the MBR? The disk can be later placed in a similar H/W configuration or booted using the BIOS boot ...
1 vote
1 answer
84 views

4TB USB3 disk compatilibity

We recently bought a USB3 Verbatim Store 'n' Save 4 TB hard disk for offline backups of our backups. It didn't work on the (Linux) server I wanted to use it on and also didn't get it to work on a ...
0 votes
1 answer
714 views

Windows Server 2008 RAID setup

I have a relatively old Windows Server 2008 machine that I am upgrading the disk space on. The disk hardware I am upgrading to is: 2TB WD - WD20EARX 2TB Seagate - ST2000DM001 1TB Seagate - ...
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

Can a Windows Server 2008 use a GPT-only partition table?

I have here a little bit uncommon system: its primary hard disk can't have an old, DOS (MBR) partition table, only a GPT type. It is an outer restriction, that nothing can be done about. It seems as ...
2 votes
2 answers
6k views

Why I cannot initialize disk to MBR in server 2012 with the new Server Manager?

Why I cannot initialize disk to MBR in server 2012 with the new Server Manager ? just GPT is allowed?
-1 votes
2 answers
443 views

Why is the BOOTMGR inside of the MBR?

According to the MBR strcuture definitions I have found, the partition table data should be within the bytes ranging from 446 to 510 of the first block of the disk. However, when I run: sudo xxd -g 1 ...
0 votes
0 answers
285 views

DL160 G5 fails to boot CentOS 5.11

I'm trying to install CentOS 5.11 on DL160 G5, with 4 bays holding 3TB sized drives. The installation with default partition layout completes successfully, however on boot I get to a blinking cursor ...
1 vote
3 answers
14k views

EFI vs MBR - Installing Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012 on 8TB

I'm having some difficulty installing Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 on an Intel Server platform. The server specs is as follows: Intel Grizzly Pass Server System - R2308GZ4GC 2x ...
2 votes
2 answers
872 views

Backup Entire USB Drive Containing Bootable Partitions in Debian [duplicate]

What's the best way to backup a USB drive with bootable data on it? For instance, I have what's called an ESXi server on a bootable USB, it's basically a linux variant with multiple partiions. What'...
3 votes
1 answer
119 views

mbr and boot sector overwritten with structured yet very odd data

I work for a web-hosting datacenter. One server was having issues with its RAID, and we were attempting to reboot into single-user mode to repair a read-only /tmp Upon rebooting, the server wouldn't ...
2 votes
1 answer
390 views

Windows 2012 BCD process to boot from replicated LUN for Boot from SAN

For our infrastructure we have a production site and a disaster site with SAN-based replication for the LUNs on the Windows servers. So for our proof of concept we have one server on the production ...
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

How to move System Reserved Flag to another partition? [closed]

I have a Dell PE R310 that came with Windows 2008 R2 with a 2 GB FAT32 partition that I want to delete. But I can't because, because it currently has the "System" flag set. How do I move it to the ...
1 vote
2 answers
117 views

How can I boot Linux with too many logical volumes?

I've created 45 logical volumes (and one extended) with fdisk on a non-boot HDD. Now the system refuses to boot, as well as any Linux live CD, that I've tried. Computer always turns off just after ...
1 vote
3 answers
2k views

Recover data on a hard-drive that changed partition table

I changed the partition table on one HDD from GPT to MBR/MSDOS but I realized (too late) that it affected all partitions on the same HDD. Basically I lost data on the secondary partition which I ...
1 vote
2 answers
117 views

Formatting a new disk partition

I just added a new raid1 volume to my Windows 2008 server. The raid sync has just completed so I want to format it. I got this message: That disk will be used just for storage, no need to boot ...
1 vote
1 answer
492 views

install boot with raid 1 in 3 TB disks

I'm trying to install /boot in a RAID 1 using 3 TB disks. As the RAID partition do not let you manage partitions than more than 2 TB, CentOS automatically configures the partitions using GPT. My ...
0 votes
2 answers
6k views

Recover Linux vmdk VMware file

I am running Xubuntu 12.04 inside VMware Workstation 7. Long story short, I had created a restore script for another PC that wiped the full 512 byte MBR, ran fdisk to create some partitions, and then ...
4 votes
3 answers
4k views

how to get a linux image and restore it on another computer

I am trying to use dd command to accomplish complete restore of a linux image on a new computer. I have two partitions sda1(main) and sda2(extended), I took a backup of mbr image using: dd if=/dev/...
3 votes
3 answers
22k views

How to calculate the starting address of a partition from MBR

Given a MBR and the structure of MBR/partition table, how can you calculate the size and starting address of each partition? For clarification let's say I was given this- Answer: There are three ...
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

What is on a HDD sectors 1 through 62 under MBR-NTFS?

I do not understand why my partitions always start on absolute sector 63. What is the purpose of sectors 1 through 62? I understand sector 1 is the MBR but what about the rest? Thanks!
0 votes
3 answers
1k views

Reinstalling GRUB on RAID array

I have a computer running Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop x64. I just bought another tb drive and wanted to combine my two drives using RAID 0. I have a MSI 890GXM-G65 motherboard and decided to use their built ...