Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
The Boot Menu lists up to 12 hard disks and four removable devices, enabling you to choose the
preferred boot device; older systems usually list only primary and secondary master and slave (four)
drives. This BIOS option enables you to install more than one bootable hard disk in your computer
and select which one you want to boot from at a BIOS level, rather than by using a boot manager
program. If you need to work with multiple OSs, this menu can be useful.
Most recent systems also enable you to boot from external USB drives, including flash or thumb
drives.
If you are booting from a hard drive that is 2.2TB or larger in capacity, you must enable UEFI
(Unified Extended Firmware Interface) Boot in the BIOS Setup and install an OS that supports UEFI.
Also, you must format the drive using the GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) Partition Table (GPT)
format.
Exit Menu
The Exit menu is for exiting the Setup program, saving changes, and loading and saving defaults.
Table 5.23
shows the typical selections found in most motherboard BIOSs.
Table 5.23. Exit Menu Settings
After you select an optimum set of BIOS Setup settings, you can save them using the Save Custom
Defaults option. This enables you to quickly restore your settings if they are corrupted or lost. All
BIOS settings are stored in the CMOS RAM memory, which is powered by a battery attached to the
motherboard.
Additional BIOS Setup Features
Some systems have additional features in their BIOS Setup screens, which might not be found in all
BIOSs. Some of the more common features you might see are listed in
Table 5.24
.
Table 5.24. Additional BIOS Setup Features
