Hi Launey:

Launey emailed me off list, probably inadvertently.  Here's my reply...

Launey Thomas wrote:
> 
> > Back to the question.  Then how are users supposed to utilize existing data
> > on non-NetBSD hard drives?
> 
> I am sure others will have better suggestions, but I once did this by
> making an entry in the MBR for a small NetBSD partition that used
> sectors 2 - 62 of the first track (i.e., the first track with the MBR
> sector removed).  This portion of the disk is normally unused, but
> check to make sure before you do it!  (I think that some older boot
> selectors install there, too!)  Then I was able to put a label on the
> disk which went into this small partition.
> 
> I suggest you back things up (including the MBR) before you try this
> the first time. :-)

That's a thought.  There's not a way for NetBSD to do this internally?  I
mean without altering the drive in an unusual way like that.

Anyway, if one wants to backup their MBR on i386, could it be done by doing
something like this:
   dd if=/dev/wd0d of=/mbr.file.backup count=1 bs=512

Enjoy,

--Dan

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