ComputerBB

How often should I back up my MBR? A lot of sites say when you make major HDD changes and such, but does the MBR depend on what files are on the HD? What I mean is, if I backed up my MBR at the begining, at a fresh reformat of my drive. The drive's MBR is screwed up by a virus about 3 months later. Can I use that backup that was made so many months back, and with completely different files on it at the time, and will it still retain the files it has at the time of the virus?

You are missinformed, you want to backup the drive image, the MBR is the first 512 bytes of the hard drive. For a good backup program try Acronis True Image http://www.acronis.com/

I know what the MBR is, but I just wanna know if it's affected by normal file changes.

The answer for that would be no, as described below it's a program that determines what part of the disk to use on boot up. Short for Master Boot Record, a small program that is executed when a computer boots up. Typically, the MBR resides on the first sector of the hard disk. The program begins the boot process by looking up the partition table to determine which partition to use for booting. It then transfers program control to the boot sector of that partition, which continues the boot process. In DOS and Windows systems, you can create the MBR with the FDISK /MBR command. An MBR virus is a common type of virus that replaces the MBR with its own code. Since the MBR executes every time a computer is started, this type of virus is extremely dangerous. MBR viruses normally enter a system through a floppy disk that is installed in the floppy drive when the computer is started up. Even if the floppy disk is not bootable, it can infect the MBR.

You know, I always use computer backup software. It allows me be sure that if something happen with my PC, I can restore my OS immediately. As for how often, I think it depends on you, how often you will change your software. You may use an image at any time. It won't be infected by virus ever, because it's unaccessable to the any program including any kind of viruses. But for sure, you may save your image in security zone. [/url]