Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware
HDHacker backs up and restores Master Boot Records
by Brad Linder Jan 30th 2009 at 2:00PM
HDHacker is a Windows utility that lets you backup or restore your boot record in a snap. The standalone program can be run from your hard drive or a USB flash drive. The one thing it does require is a working Windows installation. So if you've accidentally locked yourself out of Windows, you'll need to find a way back in before you can restore your MBR.
Fortunately if you have a Windows XP or Vista installation disc handy you can probably boot into recovery mode and try to fix or rebuild your MBR. But that's not to say HDHacker is useless. For example, if you have a triple boot system running Windows XP, OpenSUSE Linux, and Ubuntu Linux, one of the Linux distributions probably wrote over your MBR with its own GRUB bootloader. If you try to uninstall Ubuntu and keep the other operating systems you might wind up with an unbootable system. The Windows XP installation disc can help you boot into Windows, but you might find yourself without a way to boot into OpenSUSE unless you use a program like HDHacker to restore the boot record.
At least that's one example off the top of my head. If you can think of other uses for this program, let us know in the comments.
[via gHacks]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Drew Green said 3:20PM on 1-30-2009
Sounds pretty useless to me. Just rebuild the MBR like you said.
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John Davies said 10:13PM on 1-30-2009
So using a partition image with something like PING (learned about here http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/01/5-apps-for-painless-windows-reformats-for-8-2-08-switched-thin/) would not backup my MBR I imagine, am I right or wrong?
If so, would you use PING and HDHacker together?
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John Davies said 10:34PM on 1-30-2009
The reason I ask is that I have a dual-boot with Vista and Ubuntu installed.
I want to upgrade my Vista install to Windows 7, but I imagine it will over-write my MBR and I'll lose my dual-boot.
Ryan Beesley said 7:17PM on 1-31-2009
@John: Speaking from experience, you will loose "access" to Linux in that scenario. It isn't really gone though, but you will need to boot from a LiveCD or similar to run the GRUB or LILO (does any distro still use LILO?) commands to install the updated boot sector.
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miles__ahead said 4:36PM on 4-17-2009
Has anyone tried HDHacker while in WinPE? On my system I have "fake RAID" even though there's only one HD. I have Macrium Reflect 4.2 full version. The Linux Rescue CD can see the HD. It also provides a WinPE boot disc. I can see the HD after running Drvload to load the RAID driver. Anyway, it would be convenient if I could just save and restore MBR instead of having to restore an entire partition so I'm looking into ways. Used to be you could boot a floppy to do it. If I can save restore MBR using HDHacker then maybe it will be worth it to figure out how to add the RAID driver to my WinPE disc image.
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miles__ahead said 5:31PM on 4-17-2009
hmmmmm I just tried it. I like the idea but I think a small rescue utility like that is a poor choice to implement in VB. In a real emergency you're likely to be dealing with a boot CD situation and having to lug a run-time around is a pita. Should be a real stand-alone .exe like maybe in Delphi 5 if you must have a GUI. Of course the best solution would be if the Windows people figured out how to boot from the HD using a microkernel on a bootable disc like Linux has been able to do for decades it seems. I used to make an MBR save restore diskette for Win98 is the amount of time it takes to format a floppy. Now you have to do all this rocket science with the install DVD and whatnot!! I can't believe a bootable disc that does something is so difficult to make now in Windows.
Frankly it's faster just to have a dummy partition and back it up with Marcrium. When I do the restore there's an option to overwrite the MBR with the one from the backup. Silly way to do it but at least it's faster than restoring C: partition.
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miles__ahead said 7:24AM on 4-18-2009
I found a command line utility that's compatible with WinPE. It's called MbrFix. Comes with html docs and both 32 bit and 64 bit .exe files. Perfect for sticking on a USB key with a backup of your MBR.
If you search on this title:
Creating A Bootable WinPE 2.0 USB Key
it's a good step by step how to format a USB and copy WinPE on to make it bootable. Great for first-timers. I did mine today for the first time and my machine still works, so it must be nice and basic. :)
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