Thursday, July 23, 2009

Data Becomes Inaccessible: MBR Corruption in Linux

Master Boot Record is a small program that stores all the information, required by the operating for the execution of the booting process. This information is located at the first sector of the hard drive. The end of the MBR sector reveals the knowledge about the bootable partition. 

In Linux, the MBR is directly accessible through the dd command. But a mere misdeed with this information can fetch some drastic mishaps to the data. The data may become inaccessible (as the booting of the system would not be succeeded) and the Linux data recovery need may step into the scenario. This usually happens when this MBR gets overwritten. 

The chances of this phenomenon rises particularly when you are dual booting between Windows and Linux. However, there are few cases when the overwriting or the corruption of MBR is observed like:

Wrong use of dd: dd command can be used to restore MBR as:
# dd if=/path/mbr-backup of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
   
But the incorrect use may overwrite the existing MBR and may corrupt it.

We have the facility of using dual boot system and while working with Windows, clicking on hibernate instead of shutdown may overwrite the existing MBR. The GRUB boot loader, which is the multiboot loader, then gets housed.This is the clear threat to your data and it may remain inaccessible until you apply the fixing mechanism for the damaged MBR.

You may use the Data recovery linux utility which is quite efficient and powerful. Linux Distribution CD may help you in this regard, from which the booting of the system is required and some BIOS settings are required while the mere GRUB corruption can be cured. If the problem is un-addressable by any of the fix, data recovery Linux is the way to go through third party application.

These software have the inbuilt power to scan the hard drive thoroughly and to retrieve the information. Termed as Linux recovery software, these address each specific problem of data loss and offer an interactive interface to the users.

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