Subject says it.
I would like to find out if I have anything written on the MBR of a disk in my system /dev/sda, or any other device. If there is something there, is it readable, or recognizable to humans?
thanks, -chuck
On 4/9/2015 5:22 PM, Chuck Campbell wrote:
Subject says it.
I would like to find out if I have anything written on the MBR of a disk in my system /dev/sda, or any other device. If there is something there, is it readable, or recognizable to humans?
the MBR contains both binary boot code, which is not human readable, and the master partiion table for the device. you can display the latter like...
$ sudo parted /dev/sda print Model: ATA Crucial_CT512M55 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 512GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 525MB 524MB primary ext4 boot 2 525MB 512GB 512GB primary lvm
note tho, that if "Partition Table" instead says gpt, then the disk is formatted GPT and doesn't use the MBR.
$ sudo parted /dev/sdb print Model: ATA ST32000644NS (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 65.5kB 2000GB 2000GB pri raid
On 4/9/2015 8:34 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 4/9/2015 5:22 PM, Chuck Campbell wrote:
Subject says it.
I would like to find out if I have anything written on the MBR of a disk in my system /dev/sda, or any other device. If there is something there, is it readable, or recognizable to humans?
the MBR contains both binary boot code, which is not human readable, and the master partiion table for the device. you can display the latter like...
$ sudo parted /dev/sda print Model: ATA Crucial_CT512M55 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 512GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 525MB 524MB primary ext4 boot 2 525MB 512GB 512GB primary lvm
Mine looks similar to the above. Partition table is msdos, I have different partitions, but the number 1 is my /boot, where grub is installed, and it shows as type ext2.
However, when I try to boot it grub says Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xee
and won't load /vmlinuz
Googling this says it is a GUID partition table (gpt), in spite of what parted said???
-chuck
On 04/09/2015 07:22 PM, Chuck Campbell wrote:
Subject says it.
I would like to find out if I have anything written on the MBR of a disk in my system /dev/sda, or any other device. If there is something there, is it readable, or recognizable to humans?
Running "file -s /dev/sda" will tell you quite a bit about what's there.
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Chuck Campbell -
John R Pierce -
Robert Nichols -
Stephen Harris