BIOS boot disk selection - no affect?

[Slartibart]

Hello,

Here is question I haven't managed to find an explanation for after some searching.

I have windows 7 64bit SP1 (Asus P8P67 Deluxe) with an SSD (Windows disk) and 2 other data disks (contains only data, no OS).

In the BIOS it is possible to select any of these 3 as boot disks. No matter which one I select, it still boots Windows 7 from the SSD fine.

Why is this? My guess is that the data disks contain Boot Loaders also, that points to the SSD Windows installation? Is this the case? If so, how can I check this?

Is it possible to configure a disk as not-bootable, without formatting?

Thanks.

-Slartibart

 

[Dereck47]

My guess is that the data disks contain Boot Loaders also, that points to the SSD Windows installation? Is this the case?

No, that’s not the case. In your BIOS you can set the boot "Priority".

If you have 3 devices listed it tries to boot from each device listed in order until it finds the first one with an Operating System on it.

Make sure your SSD is listed 1st, that way the BIOS will not have to check the other 2 drives and your boot up time will be slightly faster.

The reason for this is for people with multiple Operating Systems.
For instance, if you had Windows O/S on your SSD and Linux O/S on one of your other drives you can select which one you want to boot to during POST by pressing F8.

 

[Slartibart]

Right. I thought I checked that, but indeed when I now removed the SSD from the list completely, it didn't boot... No mystery then. Thanks!