A7n-266C : disk disabled

  • Thread starter Thread starter J. Smith
  • Start date Start date
J

J. Smith

Hello,

On an ASUS A7N-266C with 2 disks on the primary IDE Channel, when the slave
disk is disabled in the bios (Disk = none), on the boot intro screen the
disk is logically not found, but Windows XP still see it, and it can be used
to work as if it was enabled in the bios.

How this can be possible ? Is it a bug ?


Note : the BIOS is the latest available.
 
J. Smith said:
Hello,

On an ASUS A7N-266C with 2 disks on the primary IDE Channel, when the slave
disk is disabled in the bios (Disk = none), on the boot intro screen the
disk is logically not found, but Windows XP still see it, and it can be used
to work as if it was enabled in the bios.

How this can be possible ? Is it a bug ?


Note : the BIOS is the latest available.
Click to expand...
This is completely normal.
The BIOS is only needed to boot a drive. Unless the controller itself is
disabled, WNT/W2K/WXP/Linus, which all use their own 32bit drivers to
actually control the drives, will see them.
This used to be a standard 'trick', when dealing with drives that were
larger than supported by the BIOS.

Best Wishes
 
This means that it is impossible to prevent a drive from being attacked by
viruses without removing the IDE cable ?
 
J. Smith said:
This means that it is impossible to prevent a drive from being attacked by
viruses without removing the IDE cable ?
Click to expand...
If it is on a seperate IDE controller, you can disable this controller's
driver in control panel, or if it is using the same IDE controller, the
drive itself can be disabled. Unless a virus is smart enough to know to
re-enable the controller, and then access the device, it will not be
available to the OS.

Best Wishes
 
Back
Top