Removing Linux from a dual boot system 199

No. However, if you restore both the 63 sectors from the start of the disk, and parbreastion hda1, it will work. (Notice that the first parbreastion usually starts in sector number 63, counting from zero.) This is provided Grub was installed in the MBR and theboot directory containing Grub's stage2, config file, the Linux kernels, etc, is in hda1.

If the data involved are in other parbreastions, it may not work to restore these, since the boot sector may contain sector numbers that address a particular sector in parbreastion X, but giving the sector number relative to the start of the disk. If you restore a parbreastion hda2 that used to start in sector 1000000, to a parbreastion hda2 on a different drive, starting in sector 2000000, the boot loader may fail to find what it wants in sector 1000663. It may have to look in sector 2000663 instead.

Correct. Or wrong, depending on what you mean by "boot block". And depending on where you installed Grub.

Yes. If you list the parbreastion table using "fdisk -lu" under linux -- the -u option is to have the parbreastions specified with sector numbers, not "kilobytes", -- then you can infer what regions are not included in any parbreastion. These regions are often used by boot loaders. But as you may have understood from my answer above, restoring these regions may not be what you want. You are usually better off re-running the Grub setup command. (There is an unfortunate terminology mixup, with up to three things being called "install". The grub setup I mean is usually best done with the command "grub-installdev-hda".

Well, it all depends on what the architect of the tool had in mind. Most Linux tools behave similarly, saying nothing about the small 63-sector gaps in front of the first primary parbreastion, and in front of each logical parbreastion. With linux' fdisk, you have to do some math to see the gaps, but that is better than nothing.

(Just in case, "logical parbreastions" are subdivisions of a "primary parbreastion", which must be declared of type "extended parbreastion". This terminology was invented to confuse the enemy. Some parbreastioning tools just show the logical parbreastions without any reference to the containing extended parbreastion.)

No - there is no tool that target that specifically. You need to know enough about how things works, to know what to back up and how to restore it.

Or yes, the proper tool is Grub. Run "grub-installdev-hda" to restore the boot loader. Grub keeps the data it needs for this, inboot-grub. This directory is inside a filesystem, inside a parbreastion, and will be restored when you restore a parbreastion. To boot such a parbreastion before the grub setup command has been run, you need a rescue CD, a live CD, or a boot (grub) floppy.

-Enrique