Strange booting problem

[jd1008]

On 06/25/2015 04:26 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 06/25/2015 02:51 PM, jd1008 wrote:
>> Is the    ;  \0 305 033     the cause of the problem for BIOS?
>
> Possibly?  Though, I should have also suggested that you check bytes 
> at 0x1FE and 0x1FF:
>
> # dd if=/dev/sda bs=2 count=1 skip=255 2>/dev/null | od -x
> 0000000 aa55
> 0000002
>
> Those bytes are a signature that indicates that a boot loader is 
> present, at least by convention, according to wikipedia :)
>
OK, but since this drive is my only backup drive, I feel
I cannot run dd to clobber those 466 bytes :(
Too risky, even if I feel nothing can go wrong, but ...
murphy's law ....

Re: sda1: here is the output:

dd if=/dev/sda bs=2 count=1 skip=255 2>/dev/null | od -x
0000000 aa55
0000002