> > > ... sorry, wrong typing; the corret block size is 466 and not 496. I > apologize. > > -- > Alessandro Brezzi Not quite. 446. The first sector is 512 bytes. The first 446 bytes is the MBR. The next 64 bytes is the partition record (4 X16 - hence why you can only have 4 primary partitions) followed by the magic # \x55 \xaa. 446(MBR)+64(parition table)+2(magic number)=512. You can view the partition table by doing the following as root (assuming your primary hard drive is /dev/hda for this example). dd if=/dev/hda bs=1 skip=446 count=64 |xxd This will give you the 4 partitions (16 bytes per line so one partition per line). The one that starts with \x80 is the bootable partition. Likewise if you only want to see the MBR then as root dd if=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1 |xxd And the magic number \x55 \xaa dd if=/dev/hda bs=1 skip=510 count=2 |xxd Jacques B.