Can GPT Partition Tables be backed up?

[Xad]

I'm thinking about getting a 4tb internal Drive to update my 2tb drive (as a media/data drive only not OS). I've only ever used MBR partitions so was wondering if GPT partition tables can be backed up? (not the actual content of the drive).

I've read online that the way GPT is designed there's already a backup created on the drive itself so if the main partition table gets corrupted, it will self repair. However, what if instead of corruption, the tables get deleted for some reason?

I'm a little traumatised from a few years back when i lost the partition tables from my 2 hard drives (i force powered down after Gparted froze) and i thought i lost all the content from them as i didn't understand partition tables, but luckily i was able to repair the partitions using a software called "Partition Table Doctor" and after that, kept backups of the partitions tables using a software called "HDHacker" which creates small .dat files with the important data.

Software for MBR doesn't work for GPT drives, so is there any way to backup manually? Or maybe even software available? Or does the design of GPT prevent such software from existing? I googled quite a lot but found no such software (lots of Ubuntu stuff though), however, what i did find was some people failing to repair their GPT partitions even after using various commands to repair them and in the end they tried to retrieve as much data as they could using typical data recovery methods and ended up retrieving less than half of the original data they had.

[Mickey]

have you looked at this

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html

Acronis does

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2974

2 minute google search

[Xad]

have you looked at this

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html

Acronis does

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2974

2 minute google search

The Acronis link says nothing about backing up the Partition Tables themselves, rather content on hard drives that are formatted with GPT; and yes, as i mentioned, i came across lots of links for Ubuntu/Linux but i have neither hence i posted under Windows 7 section. I was wanting to know whether a simple program (graphical interface and all) for Windows similar to HDHacker existed. But i'll look into this Gdisk program further.

If anyone knows of a simple Windows program that exists similar to HDhacker in terms of user friendliness and simplicity but for GPT, please let me know.

[Mickey]

More info on their dedicated forums about it

http://forum.acronis.com/search/apachesolr_search/gpt?filters=type:forum

also from acronic forums page I dug out this from a different software house

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
found this on the acronis site of a sim piece of sw that has full support of it
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

[DJ OD]

More info on their dedicated forums about it

http://forum.acronis.com/search/apachesolr_search/gpt?filters=type:forum

also from acronic forums page I dug out this from a different software house

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
found this on the acronis site of a sim piece of sw that has full support of it
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Will have to try out that other free one. Acronis has fucked me over 1 or 2 times in the past. Mostly its fine though, and the fuck ups might be my fault!


DJ OD