On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Joseph Hesse <joehesse at gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I have a laptop with 2 hard drives. The first has Fedora 20 (no windows > or anything else) and the second is unused. I would like to install > CentOS7 on the unused drive so I can dual boot with the choice of the 2 > OS's on the Grub menu. > I am comfortable in partitioning drives and installing Linux > distributions. I am afraid I may mess up the MBR and/or set up Grub > incorrectly so I lose everything. > Make backups of the data you care about. Also back up your MBR. > > Please point me to some documentation to help me. > I can't resist. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=linux+backup+mbr Entire MBR is in the first 512 bytes. Bootloader is in the first 446 bytes (followed by the partition table of 66 bytes, which is the difference of 512 and 446). https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Master_Boot_Record#Backup_and_restoration http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-how-to-backup-hard-disk-partition-table-mbr.html http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine/hack-and-when-disaster-strikes-restoring-master-boot-record -- ---~~.~~--- Mike // SilverTip257 //