How to backup boot information of a PC's Hard Disk?

Posted by Bear Bear on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Bear Bear
Published on 2013-11-11T03:45:47Z Indexed on 2013/11/11 3:58 UTC
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boot

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backup

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mbr

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bootsector

I just installed Windows 7 on a partition of my hard disk and I'm planning to install Vista and Windows 8 on other partitions on the same disk, and maybe a few Linux distributions too.

Before I install other Operating Systems, I would like to backup the boot information, just to make sure I can get back to Windows 7 in case anything goes wrong with the booting data.

I already made a backup of the MBR using MBRFix but I'm wondering if I should save some Boot Sector from the Windows 7 partition? I noticed that Windows Vista install DVD has a "bootrec.exe" utility in the recovery console (Shift+F10) and it has some options to rewrite the boot sector of the partitions.

Therefore I wonder if there is any utility (preferably on Hiren's BootCD) to backup/write the boot sector

I would also like to know how to backup the boot data of a Linux installation

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