> On a funny note; i read today that fdisk also has an option to "fix" an > existing partition table (under expert options)... I did try that once and I won a free system reinstall, maybe I was just unlucky or the partition table was too messed up. > Looks like the partition table is stored on the first sector of the > disk, so restoring a copy of that sector also restores the table. > But yes; storing a copy of the MBR on an external disk is what i meant. That will only restore the primary partitions (the extended partition itself is a primary partition), the location of the logical partitions inside an extended partition are saved in a different way, check [1] for a description. With luck, by restoring the extended partition one can also restore all the logical partitions inside. > You're right, it wasn't neccesary in this case, but it sometimes happens > that the order of partitions get messed up. On such occasion it might be > worthwhile to just recreate the whole table. As far as I know linux doesn't care if the partition order in the table is the same as the order on disk but lots of partition managers complain (and I like it to be nice and ordered). fdisk can create an out of order layout (at least it did for me once), cfdisk can do that too I think and gparted is a master at messing with that when doing any operation with partitions (and thats why, among other reasons, I try to touch gparted only with a long stick). Now that we are talking about this I guess it is a good time to share thoughts/experiences about this, you never know when knowing this things will prove to be life savers or avoid you from making big mistakes. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_boot_record
