What is a BIOS Drive?

[DoctorReno]

A friend has a newer Gateway and was going to reinstall the OS. Using a utility I checked the HDD drive for specs. Although there is only one physical drive, the utility showed 2 drives. One was the correct Maxtor, the second was "BIOS Drive (81hex) 81.9 GB"

What is this BIOS Drive? Can it be removed? Can one use a zero fill format on this "drive"?

Is this possibly related to the hidden partitions I've heard about where some of the reinstall files are being hidden by some mfg's?

Thanks

[Peter M]

What utility have you been using there?

[DoctorReno]

Thank you for replying Peter,

Although the system has a Maxtor drive I used the Seagate Diskwizard utility because it will access all drives and report back such things as: make, model, serial number, CHS etc etc.

As I said it showed the correct Maxtor 6Y080L0 drive and specs but it also showed a second drive: "BIOS Drive (81hex) 81.9 GB"

I've never seen this before and would like to know what it is or what and why Gateway has done this.

[DoctorReno]

bump

[DoctorReno]

bump

[beppodmime]

Now, I know some older computers (Compaq comes to mind) used to save some of their BIOS information onto a hidden partition on the hard disk, but I'm pretty doubtful that any newer computers do this. Also, my old Dell (XPST600) did have a hidden system restore partition, but I doubt the manufacturer would label a restore partition as a BIOS drive. My old Dell's was just designated by drive-letter Z:.

Any model number on this gateway? Maybe one of us can dig a little and figure something out.

And BUMP!!

[muno]

The partition bios was stored in was 7MB, not 81GB

I have no idea what bios drive is (other than that).
-M

[DoctorReno]

beppodmime: This is very new Gateway: PRB 500X with 2.66Ghz P4, 256MB RAM, 80 GB Maxtor HD, CDRW/DVD.

muno, what is a partition BIOS?

[shahani]

Partition BIOS is a small partition on the HDD which stores the utility to configure hardware. Instead of placing this in the BIOS, many OEMs like Compaq/Dell/HP create a small (15MB or less) partition which is hidden to store the enhanced BIOS.

I used PM once to nuke this partition and merge it with the main partition.

Maybe they used a "drive overlay" program like what you get from HDD mfr's. when you use a drive too large for the BIOS.

Or, it could be that the PC setup information is stored on that partiton. If you remove it, you won't be able to change any of the BIOS settings. This is usually only found on laptops though. You would have to use the recovery disks to get it back, or like w/ Compaq, you had to just reinstall it.