Skip to main content

TIH 2014 Why do I have an MBR on a storage drive?

Thread needs solution

Hello,

I have been successfully using TIH 2014 until recently when every image I tried to install completed ruined my dual boot system. The system has W7 and Linux Mint and many times I've been able to install an image of one of the OS's separately or both at the same time. Weeks back I tried to install JUST Linux Mint and it failed and wouldn't boot, then I tried to use the W7 image and Linux and W7 wouldn't boot! It took until today to get the system up and running again.

I notice that on my storage drive, which has NO OS on it I have an indication that there is an MBR. Why is that? the drive isn't bootable and is used only for storage of data.

I was using a program called Easy BCD to handle booting of W7 and Mint. Now the Grub bootloader is handling the task of dual booting. I will have to delete all my backups as I don't trust any of them now. Plus they would all have references to EBCD, which I am trying to get rid of.

I don't know if the MBR and Track 0 on my storage drive caused the mess I had but it seems odd to me that an MBR would be on a non bootable drive. Needless to say I did restore BOTH MBR and Track 0 when I tried to restore the backup image.

Thank you all in advance!

 

Capture (Small).JPG

0 Users found this helpful

Please see Microsoft webpage: Understanding Disk Partitions for information about disk partitioning which explains why you are seeing MBR and Track  0 on both of your disk drives - which put simply is because both are employing the BIOS MBR partition structure which limits the number of Primary partitions on the drives to 4 maximum before you would need to create a logical partition.

I don't believe that having the MBR on the second drive should have any impact on the issue that you have been seeing.

Untangling dual-boot systems, especially where Linux OS is mixed with Windows can be a challenge.  Linux will overwrite the Windows MBR in an attempt to install its own bootloader (Lilo, Grub etc) and Windows will do the same to Linux.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the information it makes me curious then, if you were doing an image restore on my system for one only ONE OS, would you include the 'extra' MBR and track 0 ? Or is it best to restore all the partitions, even though only one is damaged?

I tried to avoid Grub being the one to boot Windows, so I had Linux and Grub on their own partition and the MBR of 7 on it's own as well. I used Easy BCD to choose between them at boot time. Idea was that if one bootloader failed you could still run the other OS and not be dead in the water. Sounded Ok on the face of it but when the image restore failed I couldn't boot either one LOL so much for that idea. Now I don't trust Acronis after it really made the system a mess. It's been fine all these years I have no explanation why it failed so miserably.

Thanks,

Fred

Fred, you should only need to select to restore the MBR and Track 0 information if you are restoring to a new disk drive, not the original drive (assuming that there has been no total format / low-level format to completely wipe out this data).

I am using a dual-boot laptop at present (with 2 separate copies of Windows 10 OS - one with the Creator's Update (aka 1703) and the other running Windows 10 Insiders build), this previously had Windows Vista in dual-boot with Windows 10, where I have had to recover individual partitions.  When doing such a restore I only recovered the specific partition for the OS with the problem, which could be done either from the second OS running ATIH or by using the Rescue Media to boot.

I also use both EasyBCD and also iReboot - both from Neosmart Technologies, but these are enabling me to access and modify the Windows BCD configuration, which on this laptop is BIOS/MBR so uses the MBR & Track 0 to point to where the BCD store is located in the first physical partition.

Linux also writes to the MBR / Track 0 to point to its bootloader, hence if you have a working dual-boot setup, you should be careful about restoring this if it is not taken from a time when all was working fine.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Thank you Steve, I finally got Grub reinstalled now I have 7 and Mint...but I can't rid myself of that darned Easy BCD program. In spite of what they told me in their forum I can't change anything in that program w/o it stopping W7 from booting! I don't need it and I don't need to see the Windows Boot Manager message each time I go to W7 but it's working and I'll put up with it <sigh>

Thank you again,

Fred

Fred, I understand about being shown the Windows Boot Manager each time you select your Windows OS - this isn't really anything to do with EasyBCD per say, but the way that Windows itself is designed to work.  

I have seen the same myself even with two copies of Windows in dual-boot - I did have Ubuntu installed on this same laptop for a while but decided in the end to simplify things and stick with just Windows because of the issues with getting Windows and Linux to play nicely with each other!  I have Ubuntu on a separate computer instead.