Default Boot Device

[Geffers]

Can someone enlighten me as to what the default device is for modern BIOS/UEFI?

Back in the day the CD/DVD was the first boot device, then the hard drive, then USB became popular and that became an option. Seems now HD, USB, Network and optical are options but I get the impression nowadays the HD is first boot item and getting to the BIOS to change boot order can be a challenge.

I want to do a video showing how to install a live Linux Desktop onto an external USB but booting to it may be awkward for non techie souls.

Anyone able to throw some light on this I'd appreciate.

Geffers

 

[Retro]

It just means that you can set your preferred boot device available from all the attached storage drives to boot from every time.

 

[live627]

Back in the day the CD/DVD was the first boot device

no, it was the floppy drive, assuming that the user didn't change it.

 

[Geffers]

no, it was the floppy drive, assuming that the user didn't change it.

Indeedy, forgot the floppy drive.

Geffers

 

[Retro]

To elaborate a bit, the boot order can be set in a full hierarchy for every drive on a modern BIOS (including UEFI) from the last 15 years or so. The user BIOS interface is different for every manufacturer and getting into it is generally as follows:

Branded motherboard (Asus, MSI etc) one would buy when building a PC: press Del after the power-on beep. You may have to press it repeatedly rather than holding it down. There might be exceptions, but I've never seen one and I've handled a lot of motherboards.

Branded PC (HP, Dell etc): press F10, F1 or F2 after the power-on beep. Again, you may have to press it repeatedly instead of holding it down. Note that sometimes there is no beep, but the keyboard lights will flash, so go by that instead. The right key to press and finding that post reset point can vary, so if neither of those work, then look up the manual for the PC.

If you make that video, put this info in it which will help out most people trying this out.

 

[Draconis]

My PC boots off USB first, then NVMe. I haven't had a hard drive in awhile.

 

[live627]

Last year when I upgraded my computer I went from SSD to NVMe and all long and heavy I/O tasks such as filesysstem searches and booting Windows are much faster. I don't even have a very fast one.

 

[Retro]

live627, now, for giggles, you could image your Windows installation onto a hard drive and see just how glacial that is! The difference will be staggering.

 

[Geffers]

Guessing most manufacturers sell Windows machines and of course MS don't want people fiddling about with alternative operating systems, hence BIOSs not showing a menu. Even if you know the magic key it can sometimes be missed.

 

[Draconis]

Last year when I upgraded my computer I went from SSD to NVMe and all long and heavy I/O tasks such as filesysstem searches and booting Windows are much faster. I don't even have a very fast one.

I keep my monitor on stand by. My PC boots so fast that after pressing the power button, it's already booted when the display turns on (less than say 5 seconds). hehe

 

[Draconis]

live627, now, for giggles, you could image your Windows installation onto a hard drive and see just how glacial that is! The difference will be staggering.

 

[Geffers]

I keep my monitor on stand by. My PC boots so fast that after pressing the power button, it's already booted when the display turns on (less than say 5 seconds). hehe

Wow, didn't realise NVMe would make that much difference over SSD. I year or so back I upgraded my aging laptop from mechanical to SSD and what a difference, booting is certainly quick and acceptable for my needs, Guessing the NVMe is internal and not via USB as assume even USB3 would slow it down.

Geffers

 

[Retro]

Oh yeah, the difference in speed is vast. That's because nvme connects via the PCI-E bus which is so much faster than SATA. In fact, SATA is the bottleneck which is why all the SSDs that connect through it have the same read / write speeds.

An nvme drive looks like a little circuit board and connects directly to the motherboard.

 

[live627]

live627, now, for giggles, you could image your Windows installation onto a hard drive and see just how glacial that is! The difference will be staggering.

You want slow? Let''s play this game.

In perhaps 2002, I had this bright idea to install Windows 2000 onto an old Dell desktop (200MHz Pentium, PATA-100 HDD, so not even a fast disk). I was used to the setup application taking a long time, half hour or more, because I had already reinstalled Windows 98 many times. The new boot time was two minutes! I quickly scrapped that project because it would bluescreen once I moved the disk to my main computer, something that Windows 98 would happily accept after it reinstalled all drivers.

Back then, Windows made no attempt to hide technical details.

 

[Draconis]

Wow, didn't realise NVMe would make that much difference over SSD. I year or so back I upgraded my aging laptop from mechanical to SSD and what a difference, booting is certainly quick and acceptable for my needs, Guessing the NVMe is internal and not via USB as assume even USB3 would slow it down.

Geffers

The one I have is rated at something like 3500 mb/s. Like others have said, it's hooked directly to the motherboard via PCI-e, so the speed is incredible.