I'm trying to clone linux disks but run into a MBR problem. what i have is a tar file of a working linux os, SLES 11 with Grub boot loader. on a separate working system, i slave and mount a new hard drive as /dev/sdb. i format /dev/sdb1 as swap 1 gb in size. i format /dev/sdb2 as ext3 rest of hard drive, and mount as /newdisk. cd /newdisk tar -xf /root/linuxsystem.tar unmount /newdisk. now when i take this newly created disk and plug it into a new computer, i get missing boot device. so i put my SLES install disk in cd drive and boot with that and choose repair system, it sees a bad MBR and i can tell it to fix it. then i can boot this new disk no problem and it works fine. so i'm reading online about saving and restoring the MBR. they say all i need to do from my working disk when i initially create that linuxsystem.tar file- if that disk were /dev/sdc on the system then i should do dd if=/dev/sdc of=/root/saved_mbr count=1. then after my "tar -xf /root/linuxsystem.tar" above I should do dd if=/root/saved_mbr of=/dev/sdb count=1. I've tried that, and it saved 512 bytes or blocks worth when doing the dd but it did not work. how do i get that to work ? when i remounted this cloned disk to my working system to start over, it also said partition table messed up was not gpt, so i had to redo that even.
