Tools for MBR/Boot Records and References

Get a FREE set of Windows tools by PowerQuest from the Symantec FTP site for displaying and editing your Partition Tables and Boot Records... my page here will show you which files to download:
Partition Info and Partition Editor for Win 9x/Win NT/Win2k/WinXP.

1. MBRFIX.EXE 1.0.9 (Author: Kåre Smith; of Systemintegrasjon AS; for Windows™ NT/2000, XP, 2003, Vista). This links to a very nice page describing all the program's commands. Kåre has not only made sure you cannot easily mess things up saving your MBR sector, but has also added lots of extras (even a 64-bit version)! It can be downloaded from here. Please read: My verification of MbrFix's 'fixmbr' command; various other commands, and a listing of the program's usage display. Apart from MrbFix's "savembr" and "restorembr" commands, it has many other useful commands, such as: "driveinfo" and "listpartitions". The command "fixmbr" writes the MBR code for Windows XP to the first sector of the specified disk without changing the partition table; just like Recovery Console.

2. Sector Inspector. This Microsoft® Windows™ Tool has worked just fine on Win 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7 systems. Very useful (and somewhat easier to use than

Svend's 32-bit "FINDPART getsect" utility for Windows). You can dump any range of sectors in either text or binary forms and write those files back to any disk! Find out how to download SecInspect.exe's install program from this page:

Try this MS download page, or search for "Sector Inspector" here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/reskit/tools/default.mspx
[NOTE: We didn't say much about this utility in the past, due to what appeared to be a problem on our Win2000 system whenever we attempted to create a binary backup file of an MBR sector using its "-backup" command:
secinspect -backup PhysicalDrive0 mbrsect.dsk 0 1
Whenever it attempted to "lock" the drive (which was in use), we saw a WARNING message saying it couldn't do so; adding: "Are you sure you want to continue?" But recently we've had occasion to use SecInspect again (under Windows XP SP2), and it worked just fine. If you look inside the included secinspect.chm HELP file, you'll see on the "Backing up a sector range" page the same WARNING message, so we assume Microsoft included this dire warning to keep you from running an application that writes to the disk at the same time!?]

SecInspect produces a very nice display of your MBR, Partition Table(s) and Volume Boot Records for every disk connected to your computer; which you can e-mail to us if you ever need help with your boot disks! Here's a dump of its commands:


C:\Tools\SI\>secinspect -h
0001.033

Sector Inspector                 Copyright Microsoft Corporation 2003

===========================================================================
                         Command Line Help
===========================================================================
Display Help Screen

          SECINSPECT.EXE -h
          SECINSPECT.EXE -?

Generate a standard report that includes a complete hex dump.

          SECINSPECT.EXE

Generate Report with no hex dump information.

          SECINSPECT.EXE -n

Dump a sector range using 64 bit LBN.

          SECINSPECT.EXE -dsec DeviceName LBN NumberOfSectors
Example:  SECINSPECT.EXE -dsec \\.\c: 63 2

Dump a sector range using Cylinder, Head, Sector notation.

          SECINSPECT.EXE -dchs PhysicalDrive C/H/S NumberOfSectors
Example:  SECINSPECT.EXE -dchs PhysicalDrive0 5/121/12 30

Dump a file in hex.

          SECINSPECT.EXE -dfile FileName

Save a sector range as a binary .DSK file.

          SECINSPECT.EXE -backup DeviceName FileName LBN NumberOfSectors
Example:  SECINSPECT.EXE -backup c: d:\backup.dsk 0 63

Restore a sector range from a binary .DSK file.

          SECINSPECT.EXE -restore DeviceName FileName LBN [CONFIRM]
Example:  SECINSPECT.EXE -restore PhysicalDrive2 d:\backup.dsk 0
Example:  SECINSPECT.EXE -restore c: d:\backup.dsk 0 CONFIRM

Display FILETIME as UTC time

          SECINSPECT.EXE -TIME 64BitHex

NOTE: The file secinspect.exe is all you really need and it's only 32KiB (32,768 bytes). Put it together with the following batch file on a thumb drive as another useful tool to help your friends! If you install the free archive program 7-zip on your PC, you'll be able to open Sector Inspector's .msi install file (the 7-zip web page doesn't even mention it opens .MSI files!) and extract only the executable and .chm Help file from inside Sector Inspector's winrkupd.cab file; without having to install it.

SIrun.bat is a simple Batch (*.bat) program you can use to automate running Sector Inspector on a Windows computer without having to open a Command Line Interface (CLI). We also decided to have it record the date and time it was run and to add subsequent runs to an existing file rather than overwrite it. Just copy and paste the following lines into a text editor, such as Notepad, save the file as "SIrun.bat" in the same folder as secinspect.exe and either double-click on the Batch program (or use "Run") to execute it. Sector Inspector's output will then quickly appear in a NOTEPAD window:

If you want Sector Inspector to print the data without showing all the hex bytes in the MBR and VBR sectors, just add the switch "-n" like this: "secinspect -n > SIout.txt". As a matter of fact, with more time we could create a more advanced Batch program that would give you a choice of how to print out the data, and which command to run!

3. MBRWizard 2.00 — Roger Layton is this tool's author; no one else! Please see our NOTE* below about sites that tried to sell his software as their own! We've kept an archive copy of v. 1.52 (MBRWiz page) (with MD5 sums) if you're interested; (versions 1.52/1.53 are still available; backup site for MBRWizard v. 1.52; SIMTEL).

There are executables for Linux, MS-DOS and for all versions of Windows® (Win9x thru XP/2003) available! This program can do much more than PQ's MBRUTIL (see next item); especially since it's not limited to just the first HDD as MBRUTIL is. Here are only some of its functions (Command Prompt style):

* NOTE: There were at least two web sites illegally trying to sell this program as their own! Only Roger's copyright notifications were altered by these criminals! So, BE CAREFUL... Do some research before buying any software, and do not become a fool by paying a criminal for someone else's work; and possibly getting a 'buggy' or nonfunctioning program instead.

4. Free Copy/Restore MBR Utility from PowerQuest; now owned by Symantec. head.zip (a 448 kb package of four utility programs) is an excellent utility from PowerQuest because it can both save and restore all 512-bytes of the MBR sector (that includes your Partition Table) while even Windows 2000 or XP are still running! This little gem is hidden in a .zip file as "MBRutil.exe" along with its DOS version "MBRUTILD.EXE" [ plus a somewhat dangerous utility called "WipeTrk.exe" which will erase Absolute sectors 1 through 62 (which the PQ 'ReadMe.txt' file refers to as "sectors 2 through 63" -- they begin counting sectors with a 1 rather than a 0, so the MBR is sector 1 in their text file). If you execute WipeTrk.exe with no parameters it will immediately zero-out every byte of Abs. sectors 1 - 62 without any warning! ] MBRutil.exe will display the following when run with no parameters:

For example, to save your boot drive's MBR as the file "MyMBR.bin" you would enter the following at a command prompt (in a DOS box):
mbrutil /S=MyMBR.bin
To restore (or overwrite -- it won't ask you!) the MBR sector from a saved file, say "MBR1s.bin," you would simply enter:
mbrutil /R=MBR1s.bin
(most likely you'd be doing this from a real DOS prompt after booting from a floppy and using MBRUTILD instead).

Unfortunately, (or actually fortunately for anyone who mistakenly runs this program) PQ's "WipeTrk.exe" does NOT zero-out any MBR bytes! So, if you're having a problem with a Partition Table entry which FDISK refuses to delete, you'll need to use either DELpart or our own ZAP63:

5. ZAP63.zip (just 3kb) is an Assembly program which uses INT13 to 'zero-out' every byte of the first 63 sectors of any hard drive you choose.
MD5 sum of ZAP.COM (new version 1.4) = 32b9c9f746b9bb19742980adbde3e4af
(MD5 sum of older version; v 1.3 = 1f78bd078613b771fc5f00075e89dfd1).

This program is based on the original 'ZAP' utility (which wiped-out 128 sectors; too many sectors in our opinion! So, we made this 63-sector wipe-out version instead). It's ideal for quickly zeroing-out the MBR plus the next 62 sectors; which may contain old boot overlays, managers or possibly viruses. NOTE: Your computer may contain some valuable information in the sectors between the MBR (first one on the disk) and first VBR (Volume Boot Record) sector, such as computer HDD IDs, so examine (e.g., using HxD) and save them before using this utility!

For those who really want to 'start all over again' though, we recommend spending the time to 'zero-out' every byte of the whole disk with a program from the disk drive's manufacturer. By doing so, you may fix some "bad sectors" while carrying out the whole process! For more info on HDD-wiping, see: our WIPE page.

6. DiskProbe — from Microsoft®; if you can find it on your install CD (e.g., WinXP SP2 has it under \SUPPORT\TOOLS), it's sort of like getting a free Disk Editor for Win NT/2000/XP. (Too bad it doesn't understand "Dynamic Disks"!) I suggest skipping whatever long process may be involved in trying to install just DiskProbe from there, and instead: Open the SUPPORT.CAB file and extract the following files into some folder of your choice:

The .doc file has a large amount of data and illustrations about the layout of system areas on disk drives; I advise you to get a 'second opinion' before making use of anything you read there in a 'critical operation' though, since it might contain errors!

NOTE: With the release of HxD (see below), there's really no need to even consider using DiskProbe!

Free Hard Disk Drive Editors!

If you need an easy Disk Editor to make manual changes to your Partition Tables, take this link to my FreeTools review page about the PhysTechSoft-Disk Editor (PTS-DE); if you still use boot floppies under DOS, this is a great tool.
( If you want to try running it under Windows 9x, please read the CAUTION NOTE below the download link before doing so!)

(Again, PTS-DE might be a useful tool on a boot diskette; especially if you computer won't boot up, but being only a 16-bit DOS tool it can not be used under Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista) However, HxD is the ideal FREE Windows disk editor application:

HxD is a Hex Editor for editing either binary files or hard disk sectors from within Windows! This makes it the first FREE Disk Editor that can do many of things people purchase a commercial editor like WinHex for! HxD still continues to be in development (after years of improvements); the author is always interested in any bugs you might possibly find and open to suggestions! HxD already has all the basic features you'd want in such an editor: Both Hex and ASCII (including Unicode) search and replace, and it will open files, memory locations, hard drives (as either logical or physical) and disk image files too!

TestDisk (Partition Recovery) and more...

TestDisk (Version 6.11; April 19, 2009). Check out the latest features at the website!
This gem may amaze you with how quickly it can find "lost partitions" and restore them! The software basically finds any deleted partitions, then allows you to write the necessary data into your Partition Table(s) within a few minutes! (Be sure to read the helpful 'Wiki pages' documentation! TestDisk also comes with a newer program, PhotoRec - The digital photograph and MANY other file-types recovery tool.)

IMPORTANT FEATURE: As of v6.5, TestDisk can now COPY any file (or recurse through whole subfolders) from within a "lost partition" without having to first restore and reboot the computer; ideal for someone who forgot to save some data before deleting a partition and for some odd reason, you still can't access the partition any other way.

We strongly advise you to first run this tool on known good drives, without using any of its write functions while first learning how to use it. If possible, you may also wish to use some discarded drive(s) for experiments in testing all of its features! When you are fully confident in how to use TD, recovery operations should be less of a hassle.

Choose from many precompiled executables: TestDisk can run under all Windows™ and DOS (such as after booting up with a Win98 Boot Disk with the DPMI server program; CWSDPMI.EXE that's included in the download), or Linux (there's a static version you can use under almost any Linux OS) operating systems. There's even a binary for MAC OS X (10.x) too! Apart from these, you may compile from source code for some other OSs.

However, TestDisk will recognize and can recover partitions of at least the following types (check site for all the latest file systems):

BeFS (BeOS),
BSD disklabel (Free BSD / Open BSD / Net BSD),
CramFS (Compressed File System),
EXT2/EXT3 (Linux),
FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 (DOS or Windows™),
HFS and HFS+, (Hierarchial FS),
JFS (IBM's Journaled FS),
Linux Swap (1 and 2),
Linux Raid (1, 4, 5 and 6),
LVM and LVM2 (Linux Logical Volume Manager),
MAC Partition Map,
Netware NSS,
NTFS (Windows™ NT / 2000 / XP / 2003),
ReiserFS (1 and 2; 3.5 and 3.6),
UFS and UFS2(Sun or BSD),
and XFS (SGI's Journaled FS).

Multi-OS Booting

If you're seeking info specifically for the Windows™ Vista or 7 operating systems for use on dual/multi-booting disks, we suggest visiting

Multibooter's here: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/.

Companies that wish to boot more than one OS from the same computer often turn to commercial software such as: System Commander 2000 by

V Communications, Partition Magic by

PowerQuest (now owned by Symantec), Acronis OS Selector 5.0 (previously Boot Wizard) by

Acronis or a fairly new product called OSL2000

by osloader.com to replace their standard MBRs.
If you're running a Linux OS on the system, using GRUB or LILO are viable alternatives as is the BOOT.INI file from an existing Windows NT/2000/XP OS. The following are a couple other FREE alternatives:

The Ranish Partition Manager (very out-dated now!)

For those who don't require much support, there are FREE programs, including an interactive MBR which can be obtained from Mikhail Ranish: the Ranish Partition Manager and Boot Manager

http://www.ranish.com/part/. Download the stable freeware version 2.37.12 (which includes source code), or try his latest program.
Place a floppy in your A:\ drive and run PM's Install.bat to save all the Partition information from your drive(s) to the floppy! [ Why? Because the Partition Table data for your particular drive(s) can NEVER be refreshed or recovered by running an FDISK /MBR command; which simply replaces the MBR code! ]
Ranish's program, part.exe (in version 2.37.12 or part_cmd.exe in the newer beta set), is also 'Console' enabled which means it can be used rather effectively in Batch files too! For the details, open a DOS-Window at the folder where part.exe exists, then enter: part -? at the prompt (do NOT use -h as this is a command to HIDE partitions!!).

A nice little graphically enhanced and interactive MBR system called XOSL (Extended Operating System Loader). Unfortunately, its development seems to have been abandoned! Since this FREE system promoted the Ranish Partition Manager, it appears that Mikhail Ranish has given it some room on his own site for downloading:

http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm; you'll find a link there to the author's own web site.

Real Hard Disk Research

Most of the data on these pages are the result of my own testing using various versions of FDISK on real working hard drives which were methodically examined in detail with various disk editors and other utility software.

Since I also believe in having multiple sources, especially on technical topics, I've placed some other web sites here with references to disk drives, the MBR and OS Boot Records. [But remember to check and double-check before using any information from the Internet, as subtle errors exist in many magazines and on web sites.]:

Ray Knight's Home Page [ Ray's pages are quite informative. He also lists many sources. But I'm sure he'd agree that without a specific statement, neither of us want you to think that we've validated all the data on those pages simply because we list them as references. ]

List of Partition Identifiers for PCs by Andries Brouwer
Detailed listing of almost every different type of partition that has ever been used on a PC.
( I do however wish that he'd used a different font for the 'identifiers' rather than the same lower-case letters as his text! ) His second page (titled: Properties of partition tables) may be confusing to many (including the way some terms are used), but it does contain some real problems people have had with different OSs (section 2.8) and large drives (section 2.7) as various bugs or limits have been encountered in the course of our ever increasing hard disk sizes!

MBR, Partition Table and Boot Record Tools

Free Hard Disk Drive Editors!

TestDisk (Partition Recovery) and more...

Multi-OS Booting