It would appear that on Jun 3, Eric Auer did say:
> > 3) you wouldn't happen to know if using clonezilla's expert mode
> > to de-select cloning the "hidden data between MBR and 1st
> > partition" when making a clone of a working bootable {via
> > chainloader} freedos partition, would result in a clone that
> > wouldn't trash the existing MBR when it was...
>
> I do not understand the question.
Perhaps more background information would make the question clearer...
For some reason beyond my understanding, when I restored the
partition image I'd made of the FreeDOS partition with
clonezilla, two things happened which I don't understand.
1) Even though I had carefully selected the menu options to save
and restore "partition" images and decidedly did NOT select
"whole disk" images, the restore action overwrote my MBR???
I had to use a rescue disk to get my grub menu back...
2) Even though it was a partition image, and not just a file copy, the
restored FreeDOS was unbootable.
{I had already installed and configured several dos utilities and
games, so lacking a boot floppy from which I could have tried the
sys command, my solution was to mount the FreeDOS partition from
Linux and using mc I made a "file" copy of the partition's entire
filesystem. Then I reinstalled a fresh copy of FreeDOS to get to
the bootloader selection choice where I could select writing the
FreeDOS code to the bootsector. Then finally I rebooted Linux and
again used mc to copy the entire backed up FreeDOS file system
back to the mounted FreeDOS partition {overwriting all files}
which resulted in a working Freedos WITH the software I'd added
such as vim, less, and an mc like clone of nc, as well as some
toys, all in place and working...}
I was asking if anybody knew if clonezilla's expert mode option to deselect
the cloning of what it called "hidden data between MBR and 1st partition"
would in fact force it to omit recording whatever garbage it wrote to my
MBR???
Though I've also followed up on that elsewhere and it seems nobody has seen
clonzilla do that, so I'm thinking it may have only been a fluke. And I'm
thinking I'm going to have to resort to much empirical testing before I
begin to fully trust my back-up needs to clonezilla.
> In the MBR, you may have a boot menu such as GRUB. Which
> may extend into the space between MBR and 1st partition.
> To boot DOS, you need anything (MBR directly, or a boot
> menu) to get you to the boot sector of the DOS partition
> which must be a PRIMARY partition (sda/hda/... numbers
> 1-4) and the boot sector of the DOS partition must contain
> the correct info about WHERE the partition is, as in
> distance from start-of-disk / MBR to the DOS partition
> itself (DOS sometimes calls this nr of hidden sectors).
Yeah, that's about what I thought.
> Actually you could even boot DOS from a non-primary
> partition if you fixed the location information, as
> normally non-primary partitions use "relative" place
> values while booting needs "absolute" ones. Not sure
> which side effects you would get, though.
Now THAT does surprise me. And would be, no doubt, a little beyond my skill
level. Me thinks it would be easier to relocate one of my Linux to a
non-primary partition, (and edit any fstab and grub references that do not use
LABEL= or <yuck> those unreadable UUID= references instead of device names
to identify said device) to free up a primary partition for FreeDOS than to
pretend I had a clue how to rewrite the boot sector of a non-primary
partition to use absolute values...
In any case, Thank you for responding to my request for info.
--
| ~^~ ~^~
| <*> <*> Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
| ^ J(tWdy)P
| \___/ <<jtw...@ttlc.net>>
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