Question:Closed 8 years ago. ?
This question comes to mind when dealing with RAID arrays, but is not necessarily applicable to the subject. ?
How is that the BIOS is able read from a hard drive to effectively load the OS, when many OS’s need drivers to be able to do the same thing? ?Does the BIOS have a list of drivers it pulls from like one of the mainstream OS’s do like Windows or Linux?
Answer: First off, BIOS is the Basic Input/Output System, not technically an Operating System… As for loading RAID and such, what happens during the boot is the machine queries any add in cards asking if they have a BIOS to load. Mr RAID card yells out “Ya, I got something to do first”, then he fires up his “BIOS” (in this case, an OS), does some calculations itself, then passes control back to the main BIOS (“Hey, I’m done, here is all the information you need to know on a need to know, you know?”).
Once the main BIOS gets control again, it can go through as say “Ahhh, I see Mr RAID has a bootable volume, I shall cycle through that if possible, then try my other tricks”.
So not “technically” is the BIOS an operating system, but it is an Input/Output system to prepare for the real operating system