dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/floppy bs=512 count=1
(or whatever the devices might be); the point being that it was the first 512 physical bytes on the drive.
Yes, I forgot about this one.
b) Messing withh a laptop is all-or-nothing. At least on a desktop, if you want to try things out, you can strap in a spare HDD, dd from the "real" one to the spare, take out the "real" one and put the spare in its place, and then suk it and see.
With the laptops you can boot off USB devices. I have several booting sticks, M$ and DSL/ puppy Linux. The drive I removed from the laptop and put into the USB enclosure was "seen" as a boot device - thats one drive inside and one outside. Use USB2 as I had an 80G IDE backing up via a USB1.1 and it took 15 hours !!!!!
But many thanks for a wide-ranging and revealing explanation! Ted.
Cheers, glad to help. I know I need help sometimes - mostly after several pints ;) Keith