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> If The Boot Sector Of A Hard Disk With Windows 7 Is Physically Damaged, What Alternative Ways Are There To Boot The Operating System On That Hard Disk?
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If the boot sector of a hard disk with Windows 7 is physically damaged, what alternative ways are there to boot the operating system on that hard disk?
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Unfortunately, once the boot sector is damaged, there is no way to use that disk for an operating system. The problem is that it is not the operating system that looks for it, it is the BIOS, which looks for that sector, and then boots the operating system from there.
Risky, but you can use the disk as a storage.
Although you can boot the operating system to another disk and then transfer the data to a third system. If it is formatted with NTFS, there is a copy of the MFT at different points on the disk so you shouldn't lose everything. It's just the bootability.
If there is physical damage to the hard drive, even if at the moment it appears to only affect the boot sector, the life of the hard drive has technically come to an end and if you want to rescue any data from that drive it is time to copy it to another medium in good condition before the damage becomes more extensive.